Think Computer Science
On Tuesday a group of Year 10 and Lower Sixth students attended the ‘Think Computer Science’ event in Duxford – an annual event run by Microsoft to inspire students to study and eventually work in the Computer Science field.
The students heard a number of interesting talks by industry professionals from Microsoft, Jagex and HackLab. The Principle Researcher at Microsoft spoke about ‘Engineering the future’, in which the girls heard about how human-computer interfaces are already being developed based on holograms, but that the future really lies in the hands and imaginations of the students who attended. Philip Bielby, Technical Director at Jagex responsible for RuneScape – the world’s largest free Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) – inspired the girls to realise that the future was being hatched in the imaginations of present and future students.
The final talk was by Mark Calleja, co-founder of HackLab, on the topic ‘Hacker is not a dirty word’. Mark highlighted how the term ‘hacker’ should in fact be used positively to describe ‘individuals who enjoy the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming and circumventing limitations of systems to achieve novel and clever outcomes’, rather than the often misrepresented connotation of someone who ‘seeks and exploits weaknesses in a computer system or computer network’ – these people should in fact be termed ‘crackers’. He urged the students to become ethical ‘white hat hackers’, to take charge of the different technologies we use every day to create solutions and overcome obstacles rather than merely consume the technology around us.
There were hands-on workshops too where students tried out the eagerly awaited BBC micro:bit, a pocket-sized codeable computer with motion detection, a built-in compass and Bluetooth technology, which will be given, for free, to every child in Year 7 across the UK. The students had the opportunity to programme it to display a falling snowflake and to be a Harry Potter style ‘sorting hat’. Our students have already been trying out some of the programming resources – find out more by clicking here.
A science fair taking place at the event enabled the girls to try out virtual reality (VR) headsets and a new real-time articulated hand tracker and play Sanitarium – a game in which you become part of a simulated drug trial, created by the Infection Group from St Andrews University, which has been used in their most recent drug trial.
It was universally agreed to have been a very informative and inspirational event.