GDST Techathon

A group of girls were selected to represent the school at the annual GDST Techathon last week.

Ava, Lily, Sadie and Sofia in Year 7 and Crinan in Year 9 enjoyed a future-focused day at Codenode workspace, exploring how technology can be used for good in society and hearing from a number of inspiring, talented female industry leaders. Ava reports back on the highlights of their day.

‘The venue was bustling with excitement when we arrived, with teams from every GDST school present. We were teamed up with girls from Croydon High, challenged to create something that uses technology for good and could help solve a worldwide problem.  As a team, we created an app to help organise teens struggling to balance work with fun.  In the workshop, we learned about Google’s new drawing programs, and how computers are not infallible – the Ai computer I worked on thought a pen was my finger!

Over lunch, we discussed our design and came up with ideas to make it even better. During the afternoon session, half of our group worked on an advertising video whilst the other half worked on the layout and logo of the app. I was part of the team responsible for developing the video which included some rather dubious acting on my behalf as I was forced to play a stroppy teenager – which is something I know very little about (!) We presented our project to the judges and watched all the other participating schools do the same, before voting on each other’s work.  Sadly we didn’t leave with a prize but we had all had a fantastic day out.’

Ava, Year 7