On Thursday 30th January ECS were lucky enough to get a class visit from Testwood Sports College. We are lucky enough to have a good relationship with Testwood as this is is not the first time they have come to visit us! They are always welcome and we are always happy to see them. The schedule of the day was to begin with lunch, then a session on Cyber Security with Huw Fryer, a tour of campus and then a session on Web Science. Lets look at these in a bit more depth.
We went for lunch at the students union canteen. This has a selection of foods from around the world as well as sandwhiches and jacket potatoes! Its always good taking schools to lunch at places where uni students normally eat they then get a very real experience of university life. We then went to the Cyber Crime session. This session was given by Huw Fryer. He is a PhD student who did his first degree in Law and is very interested in computer security so he pursued a PhD. Below is a picture of Huw delivering the session.
Huw doing his computer security session – 30th Jan
The session was an interactive one which focused upon passwords. Mainly how easy they were to hack into and how easy they are to guess. He emphasised that if you know enough about someone , its easy to get their password info. He also emphasised the importance of not having the same password for everything and why it is important to change passwords regularly. He also did some work on Phishing to help pupils understand about websites which were real and not real. The students asked great questions about hacking, passwords and web security.
We then said good bye to Huw and had a tour of campus and the computer labs. Here is a preview of what they saw:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfY4DJyHKew&feature=player_embedded
We then had a session with the Web Science Team. Web Science is a new discipline in the department. It is interdisciplinary so it helps to combine subjects like law or sociology to help analyse the web. Its a new subject that we want to promote and help local schools engage with as its something that everyone can get involved in.
Web Science talk.
The talk focused on the spreading of rumours in social works. It looked at network theory and trolling. The talk raised questions about how different people use the web in different ways. The talk was fab and it was certainly a talking point for the group from Testwood!
I hope to see them again and I hope they had a great time.