LIDA Open Data Science for Schools (LODSS)
LODSS is LIDA’s widening participation initiative to inspire more young people, in particular from areas of acute socio-economic disadvantage, to engage in digital skills and access digital careers.
Following successful pilot outreach events in 2023, LODSS 2024 developed digital skills workshops for DigiFun and Fun Moves events (July 2024) to encompass new place-based themes associated with the local community and schools in Keighley: poor oral hygiene and low physical activity, in addition to food insecurity and low aspiration.
The DigiFun event hosted 90 primary school students from Victoria Primary in Keighley for 4 different activities in HELIX themed around nutrition, active lifestyle and increasing aspiration and role models. The activities used a combination of basic coding, critical thinking, group-solve and virtual reality tools. Deputy Head, Jackie Renton, reported back that students had an amazing time and wanted to come back to campus for future workshops.
The Fun Moves event hosted ca. 70 parents, carers and young people in Keighley for an evening focused on building physical activity into daily living with support from 10 different external stakeholders. This ranged from dance with partners Dance United Yorkshire, to more active modes of getting to school with Active Travel Bradford and WYCA. A 10-year-old in attendance asked to be shown how to ride a bike, which helped secondary schools to understand the continuing need for physical learning support in activities such as bike-riding.
LODSS is now embedded in community network, Act Locally: Keighley, and responds to critical needs in family and student welfare identified by the network stakeholders, including dental, health and social care practitioners, teachers and food bank volunteers. LODSS has been cited in applications for further funding by the network, as well as in the network visit from Department for Education in June 2024.
Read a first-had account of those who delivered the initiative