BEBRAS
The Advent term sees Comptng pupils take part in the BEBRAS UK challenges. This year almost 300 pupils from R10 to R16 took part in the national competition. The Bebras Computing Challenge introduces computational thinking to students.
It is organised in over 60 countries and designed to get students all over the world excited about computing. Over 400,000 pupils took part in the competition this year. Congratulations to Adam S, Howie, Junxi, Munawar, Hassan and Miguel who took the crown of highest score in their year group. A special well done and mention must go to Emily and Aarush in R10, who not only achieved the joint highest score in their year group at St John’s College, they also achieved the highest score in the UK out of over 20,000 competitors.
Cyberfirst Girls Competition
The Cyberfirst Girls competition was launched in a special assembly by Kate, our Cyberfirst representative and Mike from our cyber industry partners at Wales and West Utilities. Following this introduction, this year’s Cyberfirst girls challenge was the most popular to date at St John’s College, with 20 girls from R13 signing up in teams of up to 4 to compete in the online competition. The CyberFirst Girls Competition aims to inspire girls interested in technology, each team will tackle challenges from cryptography and logic to artificial intelligence and networking for the chance to be crowned cyber security champions. Two teams surpassed a score of 2500 points, with our in-school winning team achieving an impressive 3354 points. Congratulations to team JASA Script, made up of Jesselyn, Suki, Annie and Amlitha.
R13 girls in STEM trip to Sony UK with EESW - November 30th
On November 30th 13 girls from R13 were invited to Sony UK in Pencoed by EESW to learn about pathways into STEM. The first part of the day was spent at the SONY manufacturing facility in Pencoed, where we learnt about the History of SONY, had a guided tour of the manufacturing plant and saw how robotics work alongside humans to develop some of the products we have in our homes. The tour finished off with an engineering team challenge and a Q+A with some female employees working in the engineering departments at SONY. After lunch, the girls were taken to EESW HQ, where they worked in teams to program robots, getting some hands-on experience of coding and robotics, which was great fun.
Cyberfirst Pathways Event @ University of South Wales, Newport - Friday December 15th
On Friday 15th December 136 students studying Computer Science were invited to an event hosted by Cyberfirst at the University of South Wales, Newport. The aim of this event was to inspire and make students aware of the opportunities that are available within the cyber industry. This involved talks from leading industry professionals from PWC, Pure Cyber, Cardiff University, Airbus, Thales and The Intellectual Property office to name a few. As well as talks, students were given the opportunity to pick between a number of cyber related activities to take part in which aligned with their interests. The day was a great success and provided an excellent opportunity for students to witness the wealth of opportunities available in the industry.
