Computing

This year has limited, but not curtailed, our usual amazing stories of cups and awards and has been a remarkable year, not without its successes both inside and beyond the physical or virtual classroom.

In October, we came away with a cup from the Lockheed Martin Cyber Quest Competition, which will be the last for our amazingly talented Upper Sixth. They were undoubtedly a unique cohort and it is sad to say goodbye to them without the parties and high spirits of ending their school career but they will live in my memory forever as champion cup winners! They have left their legacy at school, not just in my trophy cabinet! Sam Mearns was an inspiration to others to explore web technologies; he already has an amazing portfolio of professional jobs already under his belt and his legacy will live on in school with our intranet home page; he also fixed our sign on issue for Firefly and worked with Tom Milner to produce a Sixth Form registration App that only works in range of the GPS coordinates of the school. Not even Covid-19 held them back, and in fact lockdown yielded even more amazing products. Josh Coates’ Maths questions generator that is now in use by the Maths Department; he hopes to sell it commercially. All in addition to their projects required for A Level. I know I shall be hearing about their successes in the future but I will truly miss them.

It is sad that our Fifth Years missed out on the opportunity to sit exams and show off their talents, but they instead had the opportunity to extend their knowledge by learning Java. Some students will benefit from this in their A Level by getting ahead and others, who are not taking the A Level, will go into their career with a valuable insight into this highly sought-after skill. Before lockdown the Second Years entered a competition to design an App for entry into a national Vodafone Digital Creator’s Challenge. One group of girls got into the national final with their proposal for an App called ‘Preggo’ to support woman through their pregnancy, combined with an additional piece of hardware to sense movement worn on a waistband to monitor contractions and alert when the time comes to call the hospital. Unfortunately, the final was cancelled and we await their judgement remotely.

The usual coding competition for the First Years was cancelled so we adapted it to make a Scratch game

CHURCHER’S COLLEGE | CAREER BITES

AN INSIGHT INTO THE Games industry BY PETER MOLYNEUX

MONDAY 10

FEBRUARY 2020 4.15 - 5.15PM

CHURCHER’S COLLEGE | LECTURE THEATRE

“they have left their legacy at school, not just in my trophy cabinet!”

or story or animation on the theme of the Coronavirus. We had a lot of fun shooting viruses, simulating the spread and dispensing great advice through stories, quests and quizzes and even a rap! We entered junior and senior teams for the all-day Cyber Centurion Challenge, made up of students showing great promise and relishing a challenge outside the curriculum. Computing is one of those subjects that lends itself to stretch and challenge and some up and coming students worthy of mention go way above and beyond the scope of the lesson and homework time. Oliver Fogelin, who achieved an A* in an IGCSE in his spare time, helped us achieve the Lockheed Martin cup and added some amazing accomplishments to his portfolio, narrowly missing out on a trip to the USA for the final of a Google coding competition. Ollie Williams and Will McIntyre in the Second Year achieved their Silver certificates in the iDEA (Inspiring Digital Enterprise Award), an international programme that helps develop digital, enterprise and employability skills. Several other students put in many extra hours of work and achieved a Bronze.

This year’s Third Year ICT cohort benefitted from Mr Maguire’s teaching; his enthusiasm and love of tech clearly inspires the students. Sadly, we were not able to run the functional skills certificate this year but students wanting to take it will have a chance in the new year. Clubs continue to thrive and in the Department we offer an ever popular Gaming Club that takes over the computing rooms on a Monday and Friday lunchtime and even continued remotely into lockdown. Coding Club also got off the ground and will continue in some form in September. Digital Leaders continue to offer their time, trying out new software and hardware and giving their insight into our ongoing strategy. We really enjoyed the BETT show in January, looking at an overwhelming display of hardware and software and teaching and learning ideas.

Technology has undoubtedly been a key part of this lockdown and we also look forward to blending old and new ways of working to utilise our new skills in making next year even more exciting.

Mrs K McCathie