Electronics and Computer Science Outreach

A couple weeks ago we launched a contest to see if we can fund
science day activities. 6 activities have been chosen, original brief
was for 2 but we found 6 that were related to impact. Congratulations
to the following:
1. Lenka Pitonakova & Seth Bullock: Project Name: ŒThe Hive Mind¹:
Decentralised construction in a form of a game by building rules for
robots.
2. Kirk Martinez: ŒErica & Internet of Things¹: Using Erica and
toy gadgets to demonstrate Web of Things research project aims. Rhino
and touch screen with demos.
3. Markus Luczak-Roesch & Ramine Tinati: ŒWhere does your internet
message go?¹ Understanding how quickly information is spread through
the web . This is related to the SOCIAM project. This stand will also
be promoting web safety.
4. Enrico Constanza & Mike Jewell: ŒHow Healthy is your House? Œ:
A variety of scenarios will be set up on the stand to affect
temperature (fan, heat etc) ­ visitors would move a sensor around to
see the affect and make decisions according to the temperature of the
situation. This is related to the ChariOT project.
5. Raied Al-Lashi & Steve Gunn: ŒHow can bubbles help you predict
the weather?¹ This tells us more about how bubbles can help us
understand climate, which is through determining their size distribution.
6. Wei Yung and Russell Torah: Wearable technology: touch sensors
on fabric.
We encourage you to attend the Science and Engineering Day on
Saturday 14 March with your family for an exciting day of science and engineering:
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/per/university/festival/science-and-engineering-day.page

Eric Cooke and I were invited to Bryanston school. I talked about careers in Maths and Science. Eric talked about future careers in technology, looking at the consequences of what would happen if tech took over a world and grew a brain of its own. The students really enjoyed the discussion.

We were very excited to welcome King Edwards school to the department. They were taking part a an experiment for Mandy about maths and handwriting. They were shown round the labs and also had a session on wearable technology. It was a great day and we enjoyed showing them around.

I was lucky enough to be invited to Bett 2015 to be part of a panel session, chaired by Maggie Philbin. The discussion points were:

* confidence

* experience

* perceptions

It was an interesting panel and the audience gave us some fabulous questions!

I was introduced to Hayling Island School by an alumni. It was interesting learning about Hayling Island’s East/West divide. We have said that we will be inviting the head teacher to our womens day event and science and engineering day. This is a great school with great students. I look forward to us building up a positive relationship with Hayling Island School.

I had a good time meeting with Elbrie who is the centre co-ordinator for our Southampton YRS (Young Rewired state) group. Its a group aimed at 12+ to get them into technology and coding. We were talking about plans and how to launch CoderDojo which is a group for under 12s to get them enthused about coding. The biggest challenge for this code club is attracting young girls to take part. This is an ongoing strategy. I am confident with good activities we will be getting a good number of girls coming along. The next event is 7th February.

I was very lucky to be able to go to Bett 2015. Its a huge convention with lots of learning technology tools. It has everything from tech for languages to learning maths. I went to this with my work experience student and his teacher.

The interesting stands at Bett were:

* Bee Bot : these are little technological devices for primary school students.

* Minecraft: this was a well constructed stand made out of Minecraft blocks.

* Raspberry Pi:This gave us some ideas on what to do with all the PI’s we have.

* Internet of School Things: This provided activities to do with sensors and internet of things.

Tom enjoyed the day but I felt the best part for him was getting a McDonalds at the end…

In our January Athena Swan meeting we discussed that we would need to have a critical review of where we were in the Athena Swan Process. As well as other factors of how to influence higher female participation in computing. We also discussed an upcoming seminar by Lynda Hardman. Another point of discussion was making sure we get enough photos of female students in our prospectuses and on our website.

Today we had a group from Applemore school visiting us. The visit was organised by Dr John Woollard. He did the visit as part of his PGCE teaching. It was interesting as he taught constraint programming (interesting computer science topic) in Scratch. It was interesting to hear about this. He taught a complex topic using a simple tool. Its an approach I would consider in the future. The pupils then got to learn about Nanotechnology, specifically looking at Scale. They looked at cross sections of butterflies and looked at objects very close up. There was a ‘guess the objects quiz’. There was then a chance to visit our very impressive nanotechnology lab. The group had the added drama of a gas leak alarm going off, which added a dramatic effect! We hope they had a fab day . Thanks to all involved.

On Friday 4th December, Barton Peveril College hosted a STEM day that ECS was proud to be part of. We held a session on careers in STEM. The event had a 50:50 gender split. There were approximately 240 pupils taking part and eight different activities including engineering, maths and computing.

Part of my talk was to get an understanding of what type of STEM careers young people had shown an interest in. The majority of STEM careers were medicine and criminology/forensics. There was an interest in computer security.

It was a pleasure being part of this day and congratulate Nathan and his team on doing such a good job.