Saturday 16 April 2011

CEISE paper: Junkbots

An abstract from the 7th China – Europe International Symposium on Software Industry Orientated Education to be held 23-24th May 2011 at School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton, UK. For more details can be found at this link.


Sunday 10 April 2011

...junkbot continues

The funding may have unfortunately stopped but the activities continue. On 30th March the Junkbots activities return to Brooke Weston School.

The students had to build a 'junkbot' from initially a motor and propeller and any 'junk' that was around. There were three tasks.
1. The junkbot had to get a can across a line.
2. Similar to the previous activity but this time as well as the can there was other junk (bottle tops and some small steel bits) away from the can. These also had to be transferred across the line.
3. To make the junkbots steerable.

It was never the intention that all the tasks were achieved in the time, but the student's tried out their own groups ideas with little input from the tutors.

Some very innovative results were produced.

Thank you to Mr Nigel Barratt for inviting me back and supporting the activities.

Teacher Mr Barrett said: ‘The students just got on with it and devised the models themselves. They experimented all the way through. It was three and a half lessons of having a go, coming across problems and then solving them themselves. If they got stuck we gave them a little push in the right direction. They have all learned a great deal and they were all fully engaged with the project, giving it their maximum effort.’ (Freeman, 2011)

For more details and comments made from the school follow this link.

Details can be found at the project site including some example exercises.

For further details please contact: Scott.turner@northampton.ac.uk or +44 1604 893028

Freeman C (2011) "Junkbots Project 2011" [online] URL: http://www.brookeweston.org/News/NewsItem.aspx?Id=809 accessed on: 7th April 2011.

Friday 8 April 2011

Schools fight it out in Technology Tournament


Schools from across the Northamptonshire on Wednesday 16 March at Weston Favell School, Northampton took part in The Technology Tournament is supported by The University of Northampton and organised by the Rotary Club of Nene Valley, with teams from a large number of Northamptonshire secondary schools. Teams  used everyday equipment to come up with imaginative solutions to technical problems.


"The University is delighted to be involved in promoting this exciting day of activities and to be providing judges.  In addition, our School of Science and Technology is sponsoring the Best Overall Solution award, which was won in 2010 by the Intermediate level team from Kettering Science Academy ." John Sinclair, Deputy Dean, School of Science and Technology.

The original article can be found at http://www.northampton.ac.uk/news/article/99/

For more details please contact John Sinclair Deputy Dean, School of Science and Technology.
 

Thursday 7 April 2011

Funding for Women in Computing Mentoring

The six-month-long pilot project is being run at the University of Northampton. This a collaboration between Rashmi Dravid (School of Science and Technology) and Catherine Klimes (Head of Careers and Employability) sees female students undertaking Computing degrees at The University of Northampton being mentored by professional women already working in the sector. They will be taking part in seminars, conferences and workshops as part of the project, supported by some of the leading organisations in the computing sector and independent IT consultants

The project also aims to motivate, inspire and mentor younger girls by the university students  supporting career days and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) based events at the University and secondary schools


For more details can be found by the following this link or contact Rashmi Dravid.

Articulation of Agreement signed with Informatics Nepal (Kathmandu)

Taken from: http://tunis.northampton.ac.uk/pa-newsletter/ 

Articulation of Agreement signed with Informatics Nepal (Kathmandu)



The School of Science and Technology welcomed visitors from Informatics College Nepal (Kathmandu) recently, where an Articulation of Agreement was signed between the University and the College. The School of Science and Technology is working with Informatics on course and intellectual capital collaborations.