ITS Ireland Schools Ambassador Programme News Announcement
As part of our strategy to broaden our schools outreach, ITS Ireland engaged with the Holy Family Secondary School (HFSS), Newbridge, Co. Kildare to develop a Transition Year (TY) module on ‘the role of ITS in delivering Sustainable Transport’.
Over the course of the school year, ITS Ireland delivered a suite of presentations explaining key ITS technologies and their applicability in today’s society. The presentations provided an introduction to ITS and a deeper dive into Mobility as a Service, Connected and Autonomous Vehicles, the power of data, and ITS Operations and Governance. This was then followed by presentations on how ITS can help deliver real solutions for real needs covering topics such as “ITS for Sustainability”, “ITS for Inclusiveness and Accessibility”, “Travelling in a Woman’s Shoes” and “ITS for Planning, Land Use and Transport Optimisation”. The participating students were then assigned a team project to identify transport / mobility challenges in Newbridge and to propose how ITS can contribute to solving those challenges.
To conclude the programme, ITS Ireland held an ITS Career’s Seminar for the HFSS TY students on Monday 16th May where ITS professionals drawn from our membership provided brief presentations of the various projects they are involved in and the myriad of career opportunities within our sector.
Our members (pictured above) provided presentations on their careers and the path they followed to get involved with the ITS sector. This was followed by an interactive Q&A session and an award ceremony to recognise the best project assignments. The lively interactive seminar raised awareness of the variety of interesting and rewarding career options within the ITS sector and hopefully encouraged the students to consider ITS as a career choice.
ITS Ireland appreciates the time and support provided by our members in this endeavour. We also wish to acknowledge the invaluable assistance provided by the HFSS TY teaching staff. This collaborative effort enabled a successful pilot that met the objectives of raising awareness of ITS amongst 2nd-level students whilst also ensuring that students benefit in terms of both learning and broadening their horizons.
ITS Ireland looks forward to continued collaboration with the Holy Family Secondary School, Newbridge and our next actions will be to use the learnings from this exercise to develop a suite of digital content that will be made available to all schools in Ireland.