GenerationeXt at Roche
Mrs A. Langley, Teacher of Science, writes:
On Friday 16th November, Roche in Welwyn Garden City threw open their doors for 6th form STEM students. Four intrepid Stanborough science students went to see what it was about. GenerationeXt opened with a fascinating welcome address from Stephen McGann, star of Call the Midwife and famed science communicator. Our students got a lot out of his talk about how the arts and sciences are interrelated.
Next, the Army, Navy and RAF led a workshop based on engineering. Teams had to create a cable car to transport much needed supplies to areas of Nepal devastated by an earthquake using massive mechano sets. The catch? There were three groups, each designing one component, and none of the groups could see each other. Sophie took charge of her group, and led them well in designing a great cable car tower. As the groups came together, the room was full of anticipation as we waited to see if each group had successfully designed a cable car system to work together. After a few disappointing attempts, they were successful once they applied the parallelogram of forces to the problem. This workshop was rounded off by an excellent Q&A session from the Armed Forces personnel about careers.
A maths workshop was our next stop, where maths was shown in context of clinical trials. Our 6th formers were both clinical trial patients and the scientists conducting the tests. Once the tests were done, they had to create a talk to present to all the other schools participating about what they found out. Allyna bravely took on the role of presenter, and wowed the crowd with the group’s excellent analysis. This session brought up lots of discussion about clinical trials, and all the various jobs involved in bringing a drug from a molecule to being safe for human use.
During lunch we were joined by lots of Roche employees giving our sixth formers lots of opportunities to talk to them about their jobs and find out all about the different careers available to them in STEM.
After lunch was an exciting careers workshop. First was a CV workshop, where the aim was to create the best CV for a person applying for a STEM job and to present it to actual working recruiters. Next, Stephen McGann appeared and led a presentation skills workshop. Everyone was given two minutes to prepare a one minute talk on a science topic of their choice and then present it to a room full of people they did not know. Adrenaline was pumping as presentations were made and Stephen McGann critiqued the presentations.
The final workshop of the day was all about the use of technology in medicine. Dr Shah Ahmed, the doctor who operated live on Channel 5, had brought along his augmented reality equipment. It was fascinating to put on a headset and watch as a skeleton appears before you, slowly filling with veins, arteries, nerves and muscles. Best of all, it looked so real, as if you could touch it, and as you moved around it you could see all angles of it. The applications for this technology are amazing! We used virtual reality equipment that could be used by surgeons to train in new procedures, and everyone got to have a go operating on their virtual patient. There was finally augmented reality and virtual reality fused together, bringing to life a full operating theatre and the patient perspective. The applications of these technologies, not just in medicine and education but in lots of other fields, are very exciting.
Our day at GenerationeXt ended with a keynote address from Shalom Lloyd, founder of Naturally Tribal Skincare and TEDx speaker. Her key takeaways from the day were to maximise every opportunity, never be afraid to make mistakes, and to be kind and pay it forward.
Everyone got a lot out of the day, not only some useful careers advice but also an excellent vision for the future. Our thanks go to Roche for organising such a fantastic event.
Remembrance at Stanborough
Alfie Kerr, 13K, writes:
On Friday the 9th of November the whole school gathered on the field to witness a remembrance service conducted by Mrs John, my self and Dave Forster from the WGC branch of the Royal British Legion.
Students were gathered on the field just after 11 o’clock and were stood in place to watch the service unfold. The service started with Mrs John addressing the school and inviting the cadet students onto the service area. The Exhortation was then subsequently read and the last post played by students, Johnny Baynes and Catherine Cranham and Mr Collinson, citing the start of the two minute silence. All of the students held their heads high with pride as they observed their two minute silence. Words were said by Dave Forster, Mrs John and myself.
None of this could have happened without the support of many students and teachers that helped throughout the process of organisation and the conduct of the proceedings. Special thanks go to:
Mrs John, Mrs Jackson, Miss Barnard, Dave Forster (RBL), Tony Cousins (RBL), The Royal Marines Cadets, The Sea Cadets, The Army Cadets and William Stringer.
Making the most of half term
Edgar Kager, 13H, writes:
During half term Joseph Lowton and I were given the fantastic opportunity to spend time gaining work experience from one of the school governors.
Jon Earnshaw, CTO of Pi Datametrics, was more than happy to take us on for four days at his London based cloud software consultancy office to learn the practicalities of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
However, during our four days we were not just limited to that.
One of the major contributions from our time there was digging through a recently conducted research paper on the state of voice search. This is because it is predicted by artificial intelligence experts that by 2020 half of search volume will be voice search.
Jon described our ability to carefully extract data and information from this research paper as extremely useful for shaping how he will approach clients of Pi Datametrics and as a knock on effect how companies will more accurately cater to consumers using voice chat.
We also aided in the creation of a more comprehensive questionnaire that would be used to develop a deeper understanding of the uses of voice chat in cooking, such as searching up recipes and news.
In between these times we were also educated in some of the common issues of SEO and the elaborate and complicated software that Pi Datametrics uses to reverse engineer Google and improve the competitive edge of their clients on the platform.
In between this we were invited into meetings that involved massive brands such as Dyson and Whitbread (they own both Costa Coffee and Premier Inns). Here we were given a taster into Earnshaw’s pitch and presentation style and the key issues present in these companies’ websites that was losing them visibility on the search engine Google.
On our final day we were challenged to create a similar pitch presentation for the rising online investment management company Nutmeg. All our hard work certainly paid off because at the end of the day when we showed Mr Earnshaw our presentation he said he would personally use it and that it was higher quality than some of the work by postgraduates for his company that he has seen before. Principles of SEO that took months for some of his employees to grasp was condensed and learnt swiftly within those four days by us.
National Young Mathematicians’ Award
Mrs K. Coldwell, KS5 and G&T Leader, Maths, writes:
On Thursday 8th November, four mathematically talented Year 8 students took part in the National Young Mathematicians’ Awards Round 1 at the Explore Learning Centre in Watford. The competition was based on a set of problems using dice and the sums which are possible when certain conditions were met. Catherine Cranham, Nathan Davies, Benjamin Hahn and Aamina Hussain set to work enthusiastically, making good progress. The Centre Director, who ran and marked the competition, gave the following feedback:
“A huge well done to Catherine, Aamina, Nathan and Ben! We were so impressed with their problem-solving skills, and the clear and logical reasoning they presented surrounding aspects of the challenge. Of the four Secondary Schools that competed, we are only able to take through two for Round 2. Unfortunately, the Stanborough team did not make it through to Round 2 this year. Although they scored incredibly well for the “teamwork criteria”, they just weren’t quite able to score enough in the “Mathematical criteria”. They in fact scored the maximum points possible for the teamwork criteria! I was so incredibly impressed by their dynamic team, I could hardly walk away as I wanted to watch them work. You have a natural born leader in Catherine! Ben and Nathan were keenly and meticulously working through each solution and Aamina seemed to be the calm, reflective and systematic glue that held them together! Some advice we would love to give the team going forward would be to make sure they manage time effectively. This will ensure they have enough time to maximise their work on trickier challenges, as these have the largest amount of points to be earned! They only missed out by the finest of margins!”
Although it would have been nice to go through to Round 2, the team were nevertheless brilliant ambassadors for Stanborough School and should be very proud of all that they achieved. Hopefully they will be inspired to continue solving problems, puzzles and challenges for fun, in their maths lessons and in real-life situations.
Year 12 Art Workshop
Miss A. Barnard, Subject Leader: Art, writes:
On Monday 5th November, Year 12 students were given the opportunity to take part in an oil painting workshop at Mardleybury Gallery, funded by the Art Society of Welwyn Garden City. Students were able to experiment with new and exciting media to further explore our current unit of work looking and investigating surfaces. Marilyn, the gallery owner and workshop tutor, gave students the freedom to explore their own individual style from verbal instructions and short tutorials. This led students to interpret the work without limitation and create a personalised outcome. Year 12 did a fantastic job in representing Stanborough and excelled in a range of oil painting techniques. We would like to thank the support and funding from The Arts Society Welwyn Garden who will be working with the department over this coming year. We would also like to thank both Marilyn and Naz for such wonderful hospitality and a fantastic workshop, the students thoroughly enjoyed their time at Mardleybury Gallery and gained some valuable skills in oil painting.
‘I enjoyed the visit as it gave me a chance to explore media I have not yet explored and can not work with inside of school. It was also nice to meet experienced artists and get further advice and tips.’
‘It was a challenging workshop but I really enjoyed it and would love to try something like that again!’
MBDA Girls in Engineering Day
Miss G. Hawker, Deputy Curriculum Leader: Design and Technology, writes:
On Friday 19th October, five Year 8 students and I took part in a fantastic opportunity at MBDA in Stevenage. The students took part in an event called ‘Engineer for a Day’. The event is focused on giving girls the opportunity to have a go at being an engineer for the day and work alongside a range of female MBDA engineers.
The girls were given lots of information about MBDA as a company; what they do, what it is like to work for them and the different routes into engineering as a career. During lunch they took part in a personality career quiz which informed the students about potential careers that would suit them. They then got to speak with a variety of female engineers – specifically with one who was a test engineer and gets to work with dynamite!
The main focus of the day was taking part in a real life engineering problem, where the girls had to design, build and test a structure that could transport tomatoes for the farmers in Nepal, where living on the mountainside and getting them to the market involves a long, dangerous walk down the mountain and over a river, at the end of which the tomatoes may well be a bit squashed! The girls did a fantastic job at building and presenting their system (especially when there was a staged earthquake which ‘took’ a major part of the original design!) This year, for the first time, MBDA decided to make all the teachers take part too, so there were two teacher teams also competing against each other. My own team were inspired by the classic board game Mousetrap and this inspired MBDA to run a Mousetrap event in the future!
The day was a truly brilliant experience! It was great for the students to have the freedom to make their own design decisions and build their own design, whilst having the great support from MBDA Engineers, who worked with our girls the whole day.
There was no competitive element to the day but well done to Debora Puscas, Arwen Adriaans, Phoebe Wilkins, Catherine Cranham and Cassandra Sousa for being awarded a CREST Discovery award and being fantastic engineers!
