We spoke to Elaine Manton, STEM Coordinator at Loreto Grammar School, who last year got her students involved in the Cisco Little Big Awards, which has now been developed into the Cisco Little Big Futures.
Cisco Little Big Futures is a fantastic programme that provides free resources to use with your students related to the Internet of Things.
Here’s what Elaine had to say about her experiences
I have been a pilot teacher involved in a number of European projects since 2012, including inGenious and Scientix and STEM Alliance. I realised that to compete at European level, our students needed to have more 21st Century skills to back up their excellent academic skills. I have tried to create opportunities both within and outside of the school curriculum to develop innovation, entrepreneurial skills and more recently applying digital skills to problem-based learning.
Cisco’s Little Big Awards (now called Cisco Little Big Futures) provides lots of these opportunities in a real-world context.
To quote Cisco's website:
“Cisco invites your school to take part in the Little Big Awards to show us how you think your life could be made better by connecting the unconnected.”
Having the opportunity to put theory into practice has been great fun and has given the students an idea of just how interesting a career in STEM and digital skills could be. The Little Big Awards has also helped the students develop technical skills and learn how to work well together as a team and find solutions to problems by reaching out to wonderful STEM Ambassadors provided by Cisco.
Although we didn’t win, we did reach the National Finals of the Big Bang Competition with this same project. To have got through to another national final is the icing on the cake.
My students learnt a lot from taking part in the Little Big Awards and are keen to develop their idea further following feedback from the judges. The resources introduced upcoming technologies that will soon be part of everyday life and gave students the opportunity to be creative with their learning and explore careers education. The Internet of Things isn’t on any school curriculum yet so this is a great way to look into the jobs of tomorrow that don’t exist yet.
From the Little Big Awards, I realised that the Internet of Things is a huge developing area. We were so inspired by what we learnt and what the potential could be that I wrote an Erasmus Plus bid for school to school partnership and I am delighted to say we were successful!
We are now working with an Italian and a Spanish school on a project called In The Cloud about using the Internet of Things to develop students’ skills, make them better digital citizens and enhance their employability.
Get involved
Cisco and STEM Learning have relaunched the Little Big Awards for 2018 to now be called the Little Big Futures.
This programme has a collection of resources for students aged 11-14 to participate in one-hour lessons and five-hour challenges across the STEM subjects and STEM Clubs. A CREST Discovery Award can be attained by completing the five-hour challenge, funded by Cisco.