
Awesome odds
'It was fun learning new things!', were the words of first year student Holly Travers, to which the majority of her fellow Notre Dame pupils agreed, when questioned about the event organised by BAE Systems and RAF Education on 19 September.
'The Roadshow' is a scheme set up to inspire Scotland's younger generation to become more involved in technical subjects which may one day lead to a career in Science or Engineering.
The students enjoyed a drama production in the main assembly hall named 'Awesome Odds', in which they were encouraged to contribute ideas and ask questions. Many of the girls were impressed and immediately engaged in this activity finding it extremely amusing and enjoyable.
The rest of the event consisted of workshops in which the pupils were introduced to a more exciting version of Maths than they are used to in the classroom. As you can imagine for any high school student, time out of the usual work environment, presumably playing meaningless games, is sure to cause excitement. However, what the pupils were not aware of was the hidden motive behind theses 'games'; they were created to subconsciously stimulate the student’s problem solving skills.
Each group of pupils were given an Ipad to record their group communicating as they worked together to solve each problem. Their videos were then played back for the full assembly to see, which many of the girls laughed about in good humour.
After investigating, I found that a great number of girls claimed to have enjoyed the activities due to being paired with students in their year that they normally would not have socialised with, some even forming friendships with girls outside of their house groups. On completing the problems, it was announced to the girls that, what they were actually doing, was taking part in math-based activities.
All were shocked, including first year student Jude Campbell who stated, 'We played games and had no idea that they had anything at all to do with maths!’. It was found that mostly all of the students enjoyed the new way of learning, some even describing the meaning of probability and the Fibonacci sequence!
As mentioned before, the main aim of the BAE Systems and RAF visit was to encourage young adults to become more involved in Science and Technology and I suppose many of you are wondering whether it was successful or not.
After speaking to all of the girls about their stimulating day, I found that it had been a success. Laaryib Abduu-Rahman was especially inspired, positively mentioning that she now aimed to achieve a career in Computing.
Caitlin Dahlstom S6 Notre Dame
published 08/01/2014 by Online Submission
last update 21/02/2014