Can technology help encourage more young people to get involved in politics?

In our previous blog post, we shared with you that we created a dedicated task for 11-14 year olds to discuss the UK 2015 general election.

Over the past few weeks, it has been brilliant to hear of teachers using the app/task across the country.

On the morning of the election day itself, the team went to the largest school in Newcastle, Kenton, to work with year 8 students and see whether the task had made any difference. It was incredible to see the transformation from before to after - one student said they had 'no interest in politics', but afterwards was asking lots of great questions about the different parties. They wanted to find out more.

In a couple of minutes, this video explores the session and has an interview with some of the students who took part:

Some quotes from the students:

• "If I did have the opportunity to vote, I think I would have a better idea of who I would vote for."
• "I also think I've got a better idea, because when it's on the news, it's often just clustered together, what people said. It doesn't give you the full insight of what the different parties want to do."
• "You want to know which (parties) are good for you, so with your friends, you know you can have a conversation with them to know which one is better."
• "I think it (the Digital Mystery) gives you a better understanding of stuff and you can know what's good and what's bad and I think it would be good to introduce it at other elections."

One of our brilliant pieces of feedback from Twitter:

@Refthinking Yes, of course! Brilliant, inspiring and extremely useful.

— Dominic Newbould (@DominicNewbould) May 5, 2015

Thanks to everyone for supporting this task/iPad app, including everyone following our social media updates, those at BBC Radio, the Northern Echo, Bdaily, Schools North East and North Tyneside Learning Trust.

If you've got something to share about 'Digital Mysteries: UK Election 2015', let us know!