Nominations Open For UK Digital Youth Council

Virgin Media has struck a chord with young people by forming the UK’s first Digital Youth Council that it hopes will help to work out the best way for technology to support learning.

The council will be made up of a panel of students between 13 and 17 that will share technological experiences and talk about how to use them to improve education, the group interacting directly with the Department of Education to help craft policy.

“Technology is everywhere and it’s vital that children understand how to make it work for them. This is why we are introducing rigorous new curricula in maths and computing which will teach children skills like coding and programming along with the maths which underpins computer science,” stated education minister Elizabeth Truss.

Virgin Media Business has formed the Digital Youth Council as part of its wider ‘Generation Tech’ state-of-the-nation review that is being led by Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson.

Schools that are interested in the scheme can request a submission pack from the ‘Generation Tech’ website and fill in the nomination form that is included as part of the pack.

“We’re looking forward to receiving the nominations and selecting some of the country’s most tech-savvy young people to take part. Who knows? We may find ourselves across the table from the next tech entrepreneur star. We can’t wait to hear their views on how digital can take UK education to the next level,” added Mario Di Mascio, executive sales director at Virgin Media Business.

‘Generation Tech’ was only launched at the end of April and is encouraging 20,000 schools in the UK to submit examples such as videos, photos, written examples or a piece of coding to illustrate how technology is used in each institution. Teachers can also submit feedback on how technology is used to support learning and the results will be presented to the Department of Education later this year.