Recently a group of computing students had the opportunity to visit the University of Auckland, to gain insights into what university-level computer science can look like. The intent of the visit was to inspire and motivate students who are interested in pursuing a STEM pathway.
The students got to see and hear about many fascinating new technologies currently being researched at the university, including non-euclidean virtual spaces, redirected walking, exer-gaming, computational biology, algorithms, machine learning, and other varieties of artificial intelligence.
The activities were organised by Mr Tyne Crow, a teaching fellow at the university (a former Pakuranga College teacher), and students were lucky enough to hear from the Head of the School of Computer Science, Professor Giovanni Russello, and the Academic Director of the ICT Graduate School, Dr Andrew Meads (a Pakuranga College alum!)
The activities were very much hands-on, with students getting to experience a “re-directed virtual walk” for themselves, shoot (virtual) alien spaceships by rowing a (real) exercise machine, extract DNA from kiwifruit to understand how computer algorithms can help with DNA sequencing, and train a machine learning model to recognise handwriting.
Thank you to the team at the University of Auckland for organising this fun and engaging experience for our students.
Charlie Smith, Teacher in Charge
