Cloudy Group Enterprise Academy helps young people prepare for the world of tech and the modern digital workplace. Working with schools and business partners, we support the development of students’ passion for digital solutions with practical, real-world experience and new skills that encourage their entrepreneurship.
Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to run our award-winning Enterprise Academy school programme (the App-Prentice Challenge) this year. All our exciting plans for an even bigger and better 2020 event format involving more schools, more businesses and even more new tech and gadgets to play with, have been put on hold by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Every (computer) cloud…
As it turns out, a silver lining of “new normal” remote working meant that a student brought the Challenge to us this summer!
After Cloudy Group Managing Director, David Hall, congratulated entrepreneurial Year 10 student, Aaran Chauhan, on LinkedIn for winning an award, the two of them got talking about working together. Little did they know that they were about to inspire a new “virtual world” arm for Cloudy Enterprise Academy to continue supporting young people in tech.
An online work experience masterclass
Stemming from Aaran asking David for some online work experience in the computing industry, David went on to speak to Aaran’s parents and learn more about this resourceful young student before setting him a summer holiday work experience challenge.
Following a similar format to the App building work experience that the winning team on an App-Prentice Challenge is rewarded with, Aaran was briefed with a business problem that required him to build an App solution.
The brief
Campbell Park Parish Council needed an App that the public could use to report issues in their green spaces for their landscaping team to resolve and report back on.
Using his own initiative and existing coding skills, Aaran immediately got to work piecing together the solution. Supported by David and engineers from the Cloudy team, Aaran was introduced to the Microsoft Power Platform and Power Automate tools for the App build, as well as relevant 365 apps such as Forms, Planner, Power Bi and the newly launched Microsoft Lists.
A practical education
In much the same way as the App-Prentice Challenge aims to give students an engaging learning experience that is hands-on and gives them skills applicable to Higher Education and the real-world of work, Aaran was tasked with much more than coding the App.
Working remotely, he has had to come up with creative solutions to the problems, keep to work deadlines, use new business tools, maintain communication and work with the Cloudy team, collaborate with the client, and eventually present his App to members of the council.
The result
Campbell Park Parish Council are delighted with their new “Green Spaces” Landscapers’ Reporting App. It does exactly what the brief asked; providing a reporting mechanism for the general public to notify the council of any green space issues, allowing officers to assign and manage the jobs that need addressing by landscaping staff, and delivering visual reports for monitoring job statuses and identifying patterns with problem areas.
From a personal point of view, Aaran’s mentors at Cloudy have reported how his confidence has visibly grown over the 6-week project, not to mention his hard skills using Microsoft 365 tools.
As the proud creator of a real-world App that has come from an exciting experience providing him with new communication, business and computing skills for the future, Aaran had this to say about his experience on the project:
“It’s been amazing. This is like my first proper work experience and to be able to do it for a real client is really good because I can see how it works in real time, learning about meeting with people, connecting with people. It’s just been overall exciting to do and interesting learning about Microsoft.”
After the project Aaran went on to post the following on LinkedIn:
“…I’d like to thank CloudyIT and David for allowing me to gain so many useful skills and letting me take on this task. I really enjoyed it and hope to collaborate again soon.”
Next steps
The new Campbell Park Parish Council “Green Spaces” App is currently being deployed by the Cloudy engineers and should be going live in the coming weeks.
This project has produced another happy client, and as you can see from the video (above) of Aaran giving his feedback on the project, he is over the moon with the result of his work experience.
Something for you too!
With another council already commissioning a “Green Spaces” App modelled on Aaran’s innovation, we are encouraging more councils and businesses to join our Enterprise Academy and reap the benefits to your organisation of being part of App-building projects with students like Aaran who have a passion and natural talent for digital tech.
As our Corporate Social Responsibility accreditation shows, community engagement is an important part of how we do business, and this summer (when the world changed with the Covid-19 pandemic,) our Enterprise Academy evolved into the virtual domain and opened up new avenues for individual entrepreneurial students to join us.
The new programme is being developed with partners at Buckinghamshire Business First, Bucks Skills Hub, the University of Buckingham’s Buckingham Enterprise & Innovation Unit and Study Higher among others.
Watch this space for exciting new developments!
Building our Enterprise Academy community of students and businesses
If you are a school or student interested in joining the Enterprise Academy, please register your interest by completing the form below.
Likewise, if you are a council, business or charity interested in working with us in nurturing a stronger workforce of tomorrow, email us or complete the form below with your details.
