App developers get royal approval

Duringlast week’s visit to Barrhead Foundry, HRH The Princess Royal viewed the winning app that school pupils in the area were tasked with designing.

Calumn Barton from Woodfarm High and Lewis McNeill and Nathan McCarron from St Luke’s High created the app that was put together at University of the West Scotland’s campus.

Students worked in groups of three and learned how to build and market mobile apps and online games using Touch Develop, a programme that creates apps, during weekly visits to the college.

Calumn Barton said: “The course was designed to teach us how to create an app and was more complex than similar things we’d studied before.

“We’re now looking at the app going live so local people can use it.

The winning app was chosen by senior marketing lead for Microsoft Developer Experience Group, David Webber and curriculum quality leader for computing at West College Scotland, David Renton.

He said: “This was an enriching experience for students in that it made things real for them by having an actual client to please and by having to compete against other teams.

“The final day was also a great experience, especially when the boys got to demonstrate their app to Princess Anne on Surface3 tablets that Microsoft had loaned us for the day.”

All three of the designers are hoping to go on to work in computing as a future career.