Today I was lucky enough to take a sneak peak at the year 9 computing girls club at Park High School in London. The club takes place at lunch time and the pupils and teachers were lucky enough to be able to loan out a Lego Mindstorms kit for the session. The results in just one hour were impressive with one Mindstorm being built and the other one whizzing around and speaking. The girls taking part in the club were selected by their teacher to help them to decide about whether they would like to take computing at GCSE. The girls were lively and enjoyed the activity. There was one young lady who helped her dad set up an internal network at home and another girl taking part in a cyber security challenge. The pupils I met today were a credit to the school. I went in to say hello and talk about career options in IT. We talked about the work culture at places like Google and Facebook. They learnt that in some big offices – things like food, coffee and tea were free to workers. This was impressive! I would like to help this school to obtain a Mindstorm for them to use in their lessons. They are currently really expensive for some schools to buy. I would like to thank this school for allowing me to be part of today and I want to congratulate them on nurturing some fabulous young girls. I hope to see them all in March for our women in tech conference at the University of Southampton.
Feb 04