Congratulations to our Year 9 and 10 students - Aaditya Singh, Jack Steele, Zac Barnett and Robbie Ingram who with the support of Oliver Hodkinson took first place in the Igloo Code Competition on Tuesday at the QUB Computer Science Building. The shared education IT competition was developed and ran by a group of sixth form students from Slemish College and Strathearn, sponsored by Liberty IT and Kainos. The competition tasked the boys with completing a serious of challenges in the areas of HTML, Python, Visual Programming, C#, Binary and Logic. Our team took an early lead in the competition which they held onto throughout, scoring 727pts to beat Ballymena Academy with 601 and Methody a close third on 600. Each of the students won an Arduino starter kit worth over £100, these STEM kits allow the boys to further their knowledge and interest in electronics and programming.
Talks were held by Liberty IT and Kainos on the growing IT sectors in Northern Ireland. They explored the various career pathways, along with the impact that machine Learning and AI are having on the industry. They were also given a talk on Cybersecurity by an industry expert, who explained his role and the importance of understanding how to keep software secure.