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Ada Lovelace Week: Workshops

30th November 18

Ada Lovelace was born in 1852 and, sadly, only lived to the age of 36. Despite living a short life at a time when women weren’t expected to be much more than homemakers, she made an indelible impression on the world of computing, writing the first computer programme over 100 years before the first computer was built.

Her notes on mathematician, Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine contain what could be considered the first computer algorithm and she foresaw uses for computers beyond just calculations and numbers.

Ada died of Cancer on 27^th November 1852, so this week, we celebrated her life with a series of workshops for Upper School students. Here is the Ada-inspired info they downloaded from our amazing speakers:

Tuesday

Firetech Micro:bit Workshop

On Tuesday @FireTechCamp came into school to run a workshop for the YR10 students. They learnt to program the micro:bits with micropython to act as dice, send and receive radio messages, play music, display images and produce different colours from LEDs.

This celebration of how STEM skills can be used creatively would have been right up Ada’s street.

Wednesday and Thursday

STEM Careers

On Wednesday we had visitors in to talk to the students about their careers and how they use STEM skills. Sadhbh Doherty spoke about her product design job creating toys at @techwillsaveus, Melenie Schatynski spoke about her software engineering job at The Telegraph and Daniel Maskit spoke about creating incredible visual effects for movies.

Phil Stuart from Preloaded games spoke about creating video games and the students got to have a go on some virtual reality (VR) games.

Jennifer Hardi from London South Bank University spoke about architectural technology and architectural engineering and CEO Karin Nielsen spoke to the pupils about her app Lenny. The students were really engaged and loved learning about these creative jobs that use STEM skills with one student saying, “I greatly enjoyed all the innovators who came in to speak to us. It was a fun and exciting way to learn about different careers.”