UKESF Scholar Outreach at Roundwood Park School

UKESF Scholar (2016–20) Will studies at the University of Southampton and is sponsored by Imagination Technologies. He recently visited Roundwood Park School, Hertfordshire, on two consecutive days to talk to Year 12 Physics students who are considering their options for university.

Will used the UKESF-produced resources to help prepare and supported his talk with an edited version of the UKESF PowerPoint presentation.

“I spoke to them about a range of topics, including why they should try Electronics, what I’d been up to myself, the UK Electronics industry and my scholarship. I also tried to give more general advice about my experience choosing a university, such as the importance of trying out subjects which aren’t taught in school (such as Engineering) and also how going to as many open days as possible is the only way to really understand where you want to be and what you want to study.

“I focused on encouraging them to try out new subjects because my old school didn’t offer much outside of the core STEM subjects, and I only ended up trying Electronic Engineering because my dad facilitated my interest and another former student came to talk to me about his degree.

“In order to introduce the students at Roundwood to programming, I used an idea I got from a video by the Youtube channel Computerphile as an activity. This was attended both by some Year 12s and also a few members of my old Electronics club who were in lower years, which challenged them to write a program that made the nicest sounding music they could find by piping 8-bit characters to the aplay service from a c++ program on Raspberry Pis (headphones recommended). It seemed to be well received and some of the produced sounds didn’t induce pain!”

Many thanks to Will for helping to spread the word about the UKESF.