Towards smart city education

Sustainability has been an important topic in UK schools for some time, most notably since the Sustainable School Strategy was proposed by the UK Department for Education (DFES) in 2006. However, as smart city technologies emerge and show real promise in contributing to a more sustainable future, it is becoming apparent that new skills for working with the big urban data sets that drive these innovations must be taught to upcoming generations to ensure that they can be active smart city citizens. Current practice within schools is to distribute teaching of different aspects of data skills across the curriculum. We ask the question how can data skills be taught using a more unified and practical approach, which facilitates application of skills in genuine, smart city contexts. We propose to use Urban Data Games to set a context for learning, and demonstrating, practical application of skills for handling large complex data sets. This paper focuses on an Appathon challenge, which will shortly be trialled in a Milton Keynes school, in which participants are tasked to design a novel App from real satellite data after first learning and applying data skills to data about home energy consumption.