On Wednesday 8 May at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Summit London, one of the directors of AWS Europe officially launched their new program, GetIT to encourage more girls to consider a career in Technology.  We were one of the schools that took part in the pilot program, open to 5,600 students initially.  Teams of Year 8s from around the country were invited to design an app that would help their school or local community.  AWS committed to build the winning idea and bring it to market.  130 teams from 36 schools submitted their ideas in March, and the judges selected the top 10.  One of the five Wren teams that entered, Team Cheetah, were in the top 10 and were invited to the AWS Summit for the final of the competition.

The first round of the day was five teams presenting their ideas to a panel of judges.  The quality of presentations from the other teams was incredibly high, but it was our team that wowed the judges and won the round.  This meant they were one of the final two teams who got to present their idea to the conference at the end of the day.  Both teams were very professional and confidently answered the judges’ questions but in the end, the Cheetahs came second.

The two teams presented to a room of approximately 1,200 people, including some very senior executives from Amazon and their clients.  The judges included Tom Read, the Chief Digital and Information Officer for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Teresa Carlson, the VP of AWS’s worldwide public sector business, who said that she was so impressed with our idea that she would like to help turn it into a reality as well.  Our team also caught the attention of the Chief Information Security Officer of the MoJ who tweeted his praise.

So what was Team Cheetah’s app idea?  A digital planner that integrates with Alexa so that teachers can set home learning more easily, which will make it easier for students and parents to find out what their home learning is, even if they were not in that lesson, or forgot to write it down.