News

On Thursday, 29 June, a small group of Year 8 Students from the Academy’s Robotics club went to Mildenhall for a secret programming event. Our Year 8 correspondents reported:

"We were brought on a “secret mission” where we had to build a world changing invention to solve a worldwide problem from the UN’s global goals, which has and will continue to plague the oceans of our planet; Oil Spills. We had to create a boat of our own imagination that surveyed and cleaned a large surface area, it was called an “oil cleaner upper”. There were two aspects of this project, building and programming. Everyone was split into of teams of 3 or 4. We organised our teams to play to our strengths. The first part of the building phase was design ideas. We used tablets to research designs. We then created designs that we thought would hold the technology required; BBC Micro:Bits. We then started busing with materials like balsa wood, hot glue, motors, wires, coffee stirrers, coffee cup bottoms and the servo’s as well as motor controllers. We programs the motors given using the make code website with blocks and used thinking skills to decide which ways to turn to try to cover the water. We tested it and couldn’t believe it! It worked! With a bit more tweaking of the code, we got it to cover the area more accurately and reliably."

-Sofia Parfitt and Aiden Binu

All the students involved were amazing project managers; playing to their strengths but also encouraging others’ out of their comfort zones. They even got a free BBC Micro:Bit V2 to take home and keep programming! Thank you to Computing At School hub leader Martin Sexton, Pete Marshman and ARM for making this inspiring day happen!