What is Make it Happen?

‘Make It Happen’ is a charity who inspire young people in digital technology. Our aim is to encourage young people to go from passive consumers of technology to digital creators. 

 

App-Design Competition

Make It Happen offer App-design competitions for entire schools P1-7. Pupils are given the opportunity to consider how apps could help them solve a problem or make their life easier. They then design their app idea using our paper based submission sheet. The winner of your schools competition will then have their winning app idea built by our team of volunteers and published for all to use. 

 

In regards to the process of running the App-design competition – typically we visit each individual class to present the competition,  hear the pupils ideas, answer any questions and get them generally excited about different app ideas and uses for technology. This normally takes around 20 minutes per class and then we leave the submission sheets with staff to complete at a convenient time.  

 

Once the classes have completed their submissions we can collect the final entries, pick a winner and start building the winning app. When the app is built we will return to the school to announce the winner, runners up and inspiring ideas and finally, publish the winning app. I should say, that the whole event is completely free.

 

All Resources – https://makeithappen.club/what-we-do 

Previous Winners https://makeithappen.club/winners

 

Workshops 

At Make It Happen we aim to give all pupils the opportunity to experience a variety of digital learning experiences. We have developed a range of workshops to suit a variety or ages and interests:

• Stop Motion
• Green Screen
• Coding 
• App Design
• Dragons Den 
• Micro:Bit 
• Spheros (resource depending)

 

Make It Happen High 

The ‘Make It Happen High’ program is ultimately a ‘step up’ from our original competition, allowing pupils to see how an app idea progresses through the App ‘development cycle’ (app design -> development of app -> test app to find and fix issues -> launch the app). In the series of lessons we use ’Thunkable’ to create a fully functioning app that can be live tested on all devices and subsequently published. 

 

Additional Resources 

Digital Progressions planner (Early to Third Level) https://www.makeithappen.club/digital_progression_planner_primary.pdf