Women in STEM

01.11.2022

Just before half term, on Wednesday 19^th October, all the girls in Year Six arrived at school really excited to go to Bletchley Park and learn about Women in Stem (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and famous people who have worked in computing.

When we arrived at Bletchley we were all very eager to get started with our first activity. 6G started with a forensic science murder mystery; this involved solving codes to be able to unlock the text messages and emails on a mobile phone, watching videos of suspects being interviewed, reviewing social media accounts for clues and piecing together evidence from CCTV and phone records. In another room 6W had a Virtual Reality session in which they had to defuse a bomb. This required excellent communication skills as we had to try to explain what colours and features the bomb had to our teammates, so they could guide us through the challenges and which wires should be cut. Although it was very challenging, we didn’t give up and found it very enjoyable. We enjoyed being transported back to 1940 to solve Cyphers and learn more about Encryption which helped to end WWII.

In the afternoon both classes had an interesting talk from Olga Kravchenko, who is featured in the most recent edition of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls. She has set up a VR business, Musemio, with her friend from college. Olga also told us about her life and how she grew up in Ukraine and what inspired her to start her business. During the day we also had to explore the building to find information about different people in Stem and answer a question about him/her. One of our favourite activities of the trip was playing with the retro games which included driving a car, typing on old computers and playing Sonic games.

All the girls were very sad to leave but enjoyed the first trip of the year.

By Jessica M, Year 6