Sixth Form students from Ada, the National College for Digital Skills’ have hit the ground running this year, completing a three-day real-world project set by cloud services provider Amazon Web Services (AWS). In response to the current cost of living crisis and soaring energy costs, 25 teams of 16 to 19-year-old Ada Computer Science students were briefed by AWS to ‘Build an affordable smart home solution to help reduce energy waste’. Teams were asked to prepare a pitch for their solution, and to produce an economic and monetisation plan, a technical design document, and a press release for their product.

On day one of the three-day project expert volunteers from across AWS came to the College and delivered specialist workshops for the students on; economics, UX and system design, project management and pitching. Students spent day two working on their ideas and the deliverables and on day three, the final day of the project all teams had to pitch their idea in front of a panel of judges. Teams were scored by the judges and the three highest scoring teams did a final pitch to a larger panel and in front of their peers before the winning team was announced.

The winning team designed, ‘Eco Pod’, a small device that can be fitted in any room of the home through which artificial intelligence (AI) can control the temperature inside the home from data input from the owners’ smartwatch or phone at any time.

Ada offers students the chance to learn from industry leaders like AWS, so they can learn new skills, see from different perspectives, and learn about the potential future that awaits them.