STUDENTS from University Technical College Reading have rounded off the Autumn term with a project set by a children’s charity.
Students from the school on Crescent Road took part in the project by Safe!, a charity which supports children and families affected by crime or abuse in Thames Valley, on Tuesday, December 5.
Senior practitioner at the charity Alice Brown led the event by explaining what the charity is about and tasked them with working in teams to develop solutions to help young people affected by crime.
They then gave presentations about solutions, with teams putting forward ideas such as anonymous reporting apps, and resources such as a podcast sharing stories of others’ experiences and advice on how to get support.
They were also guided by 25 employers who lent their support by helping to flesh-out ideas and highlight potential problems.
Then former UTC students Rhiannon Dodson Edwards, who now works for Cisco, and Hashim Khan, now at Palo Alto Networks, were tasked with choosing a winning team.
Lesley Reeve from Fiscal Technologies, one of the 25 employers, saying: “They’ve worked really hard on variety of ideas, I’m really looking forward to seeing them present.
“It’s a great day for employers to get involved and help students getting ready for working life and the skills required.”
Year 12 student Grayson Jenkins gave a presentation on her team’s idea for youth centre, and said after the event: “I thought today was amazing.
“The youth safety charity is something I could really relate to–I actually think it’s the best experience I’ve had here at UTC, in that doing it all day gave us a chance to really stretch our ideas and think of all aspects of the project.
“It was thrilling giving the presentation–there were so many people listening, and I enjoyed the chance to put my public speaking to the test.”
Year 12 student Aleksa Kovacevic said that the presentation‘really helped his confidence’ with public speaking and that he appreciated working on all the different aspects of thinking the project through.
His group, which also produced a youth center idea, won their class round for the effort they had put in coding their website for the presentation.
Both students praised their guest employer, Sam Hastings, from Cisco.
Grayson added: “He checked in every 20 minutes or so checking we were doing okay and offered input to expand our ideas– we learnt a lot from him.”
The overall winners will be selected after Christmas and receive the British Computer Society’s Anthony Parker prize and Amazon vouchers.
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