TakingITGlobal receives the 2024 Gold Anthem Award for Your Voice is Power in the Education, Art & Culture Category
Since the organization was founded in 1999, both Michael Furdyk and Jennifer Corriero have been drivers of innovation in education through the use of technology for student engagement. For 25 years, the organization has been carving new pathways for educators to utilize digital tools to support classroom in fostering 21st Century skills.
“We are grateful for the partnerships we have been able to develop over the years with school boards where our programs have been a catalyst for inspiration and creativity, igniting possibility thinking among learners.” Jennifer Corriero
New platforms and tools are continually being utilized and developed in order to support community impact and provide ways for young people to understand how they can make a difference.
Through the Your Voice is Power program, TakingITGlobal partnered with Amazon Future Engineer Canada and Amazon Music to help students across the country learn to code by remixing hip hop beats.
Originally created by the EarSketch team at George Tech University, along with YELLOW, TakingITGlobal collaborated with Indigenous educators Christine M’Lot and Marika Schalla, along with the Cloud Innovation Centre at the University of British Columbia, to bring the program to Canada with a focus on Canadian and Indigenous histories.
To date, the program has partnered with artists Dakota Bear, Jayli Wolf, Samian, Dr. Duke Redbird, Twin Flames, and Aysanabee who have each shared beats and vocals from their songs for students to remix as they learn to code and make their own songs.
Over the last few years, Hackathon events and workshops have been held at schools in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Sioux Lookout, Calgary, Toronto, Whitehorse, Ottawa, Igloolik and Inuvik!
Activation events also took place this fall at Science World, and TELUS World of Science, and TELUS Spark Science Centre, bringing increased exposure to coding with music as an entry point.
Since program inception in 2021… Students spent over 110,000 hours on Your Voice is Power activities at online and in person events, over 100,000 Canadian visitors engaged on the Your Voice is Power coding platform, Earsketch, over 25,000 students were reached across 467 schools, and over 1,400 teachers attended Your Voice is Power training events!
