Digital Academy for Teens:
Get Started with Green Tech
A self-paced course that will be taught by industry professionals working in sustainability.
Course Objectives
Learn the fundamentals of climate change impacts, green tech innovation, and the roles and responsibilities of humans, businesses, government and technology to create sustainable solutions. This is a self-paced course that will be taught by industry professionals working in sustainability.
What will you do?
Through a series of 4 online workshops, you will learn the essentials of climate science and what can be done using technology and data to mitigate the impact of global warming. Understand the connected nature and collective responsibility of all players, and build the language to discuss solutions to drive measurable change.
Weekly Challenges & Work Experience
Through weekly challenges, you will learn about possible solutions from cutting edge technologies and critical role of data to guide us to a sustainable future. In role play games, you will take on the roles of both Government Leader and Corporate Sustainability Leader respectively, and learn how to manage and govern from a country and business perspective. You will also learn how to set Net Zero targets.
This 4-week self-paced course will give you access to the live sessions and all recordings. Participants who complete the course and the assigned challenges will receive a certificate for the course.
Pre-requisites:
This course is suitable for students with no experience in technology, data, or sustainability solutions. Students should be comfortable with basic concepts of computing and math and be able to use a PC with an Internet connection and video camera.
Recommended Age:
14 -19 yrs
Curriculum
The course includes 4 weekly sessions of live and recorded instruction with professionals, Digital Challenges, and project application with support from mentors.
Week 1: Our changing planet
Learn about the burning issues of Planet Earth and the impacts of human and business behaviour. Understand the needs of economic growth, how it affects the environment, and what this means from growing nations and established nations.
We’ll discuss the evidence for the environmental damage and the impact this is having on natural habitats.
Week 2: Humans are innovators
Learn what we’re doing to change the way we consume resources. We will look at renewable energy sources and the effect that it has on our grid. Where should we focus our efforts over the next two decades? Should we consider things like distributed grids and move away from centralised power? How could this work? How much of this would we have to do to be “carbon neutral”?
We’ll also look at the new energy and battery revolutions that are in flight that would change the way we look at energy if we managed to achieve them.
Week 3: Governments and their responsibilities
We’ll look at what governments around the world have pledged through COP27, expected impacts, and unresolved issues. What should governments be responsible for? How can they enforce the principle of ‘polluter pays’ without being compromised?
We’ll look at the systems and standards that governments are building together to enable tracking of their sustainability pledges and the penalties that are enforced if they fail them. We’ll look at the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to guide us on how we can build a sustainable planet.
We’ll also look at some of the predictions that extreme weather will have on some countries over other countries through flooding, forest fires, tsunamis and tornados, and what the financial effect this will have on economies.
Week 4: Corporations and their responsibilities
We’ll look at how corporations are embracing new standards of practice and the roles and responsibilities of a Corporate Sustainability Leader. Understand what reaching ‘net zero’ by 2030 or 2050 means for corporations, how businesses are tracking and reporting on their emissions, and what happens if they fall short of their targets.
You will hear examples from different industries from oil and gas to banking, how data is used to report on emissions, and what businesses are doing to offset them. We’ll break this down into standards such as GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) and scoped emissions, what data can be collected and tracked, and why.
Study Time Required:
1-2 hours per week over 4 weeks.
Work Experience Project
Students in the course will be given an opportunity to join a work experience with Digital Camp, Digital Incubator, and/or industry partners, and apply their learnings in projects working alongside tech and business professionals from Elastacloud, Microsoft, Vodafone and more.
Dates & Times:
Autumn Course: Tuesdays 5:00-6:00pm GMT
September 26th, October 3rd, 10th, 17th
Sessions:
The sessions will be run online in an interactive learning session with a professional from Elastacloud who will serve as your Mentor during this training. This will generally consist of 30 minutes of lesson and 15 minutes of activity and/or group project work guided by your Mentor.
You will complete Digital Challenges in each workshop. These Challenges may be completed either during the hour or outside of the course. Students will receive a Certificate of Completion at the end of the course once projects are submitted.
Mentors:
Richard Conway, CEO Elastacloud
What you will need
You will need a PC or Mac and a smart phone ideally with video camera plus charging cables.
Under 18’s require a consent form by a parent / guardian which can be found here.
Research Study
We are conducting a research study with the Digital Camp, Digital Incubator, and Digital Academy with Dr. Jonathan Beale (Oxford, Harvard), Dr. Iro Konstantinou (Eton College), and Dr. Michael Mannino (Flow Research Collective) to test how digital education and purpose-driven programmes can impact academic resilience, performance, and flow in young people as well as growth and development in mentors.
Participants will be invited to complete surveys and offer feedback or may opt out of the study.
Our Mission
We aim to inspire a love of learning with young people about technology and support their journeys to first work experiences. We believe it is critical to create an engaging and inclusive environment for girls, which are under-represented in both STEM and in leadership roles.
We’re on a mission to build a sustainable education programme offering skills development and work opportunities for boys and girls of any age through a co-funded model with socially responsible businesses, educational organisations, and government.
This programme is a pilot supported by Vodafone, Microsoft, Elastacloud and volunteers from the tech and business community. Proceeds from the Digital Academy are helping to raise funds to enable us to build a sustainable programme to support students to launch their own businesses. We greatly value your support and feedback.
