Three Barking& Dagenham College students have been awarded a £5,000 grant from Jisc, a charity which provides digital services for UK education and research, to help with their business idea Classnet.
Alison Wright, 32, from Havering, Saloum Jobe, 20, from Basildon and Kieran Wright, 20, from Havering, who are all studying Access to IT at the College, were encouraged to enter their idea in the charity's 'Summer of Student Innovation Project' by their tutor, Arfaat Shah. To enter they had to provide a five minute Youtube video highlighting what their business was all about. Their idea, Classnet, is an academic social website which offers an entirely new virtual learning environment. It aims to help college and university students in their studies.
The idea was awarded the most 'likes' online, which put the team through to the second round where a panel of experts in developing innovative ideas in education decided which projects would be funded. The team were told of their success this week.
Commenting on the news, Kieran said: "We were delighted to find out that we had been given the grant. It's a huge amount of money, which will certainly be put to good use developing the idea – we can't wait to see Classnet 'out there' being used by students across the country. We'd also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone at Barking & Dagenham College for their support. We couldn't have done it without this help, our tutors have really pushed us to excel and it's paid off!"
Thanks to the funding the team will now spend the Summer developing Classnet, and be further helped by experts in developing and education, who are set to help and encourage all teams to grow and develop their business ideas.
Their tutor, Arfaat Shah, commented: "We are all really proud of what these students have achieved. They have worked really hard on Classnet, which is such a great idea and has huge potential. I am confident we will see much more of these students and Classnet in the future as they all go from strength to strength."
David Kernohan, programme manager, Jisc, says: "We're really happy at Jisc to be supporting a variety of projects as a part of the Summer of Student Innovation. Out of the 36 entries this was the strongest FE based proposal. ClassNet is a simple and potentially useful idea with a very strong user focused approach. It's an issue that every student faces and it would be refreshing to have a student focused take on it – I think we will learn a lot from how this team gets on."
All three of the Classnet innovators, who are currently completing their studies at Barking& Dagenham College, have secured university places, from this September, to study computer science.
