Creating the future at IBM

As part of our continued drive to encourage girls to study computer science 10 Year 8 girls were given the opportunity to take part in the IBM ‘think.IT’ event.

This took place at Hursley Park on 9-10th July 2014.  This is a prestigious event with only 100 girls from across the country taking part.

This year’s event followed a theme of “Everything Connected”. Students were asked to work on a project throughout the two days to devise a new product or solution in this field area, before designing and marketing their creation.

The event kicked off with a Murder Mystery activity to enable the students to experience gathering useful information from a variety of sources, whilst strengthening relationships with their new team mates.  

Throughout the two days, students worked with IBM Engineers to devise a product and create an engaging presentation to showcase their work.  To help with the development process there were a number of presentations from senior IBM staff, including an IBM Executive on Designing Solutions.  Following each presentation students broke into their groups to continue their work guided by their IBM mentor.



The event culminated with each team pitching their product or solution at the “think.IT Expo”. Each team had a demo stand and had to discuss and sell their ideas to members of the Hursley Lab community. Votes were then cast to decide the winning team, using a voting system created by the girls themselves.

One team’s product impressed the judges so much that the idea has been floated with the IBM VP and Lab Director who was excited by it to the extent that it is being arranged for the girls to return to IBM in the autumn term and work with a design team to create the product, with a view to commercial development.  We are proud to say that it was a Highcliffe student who generated the idea for the product.

All girls that attended this event were a credit to the school and it is hoped that this experience will encourage them to investigate the possible career choices available in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.

We would like to thank IBM for providing the students with this amazing opportunity to see how computing and ICT skills are used in the business world.

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Owned by: | Last Published: 16/07/2014 09:28:05 | Next Update: N/A