Lambeth Digital Leaders' Conference

On Friday 28th November, Miss Darrell took 5 Digital Leaders to their very first Lambeth Digital Leaders Conference at the Southbank Centre,12 other Lambeth schools were also in attendance. 

We listened to a keynote speech by Jim Boulton who is an author on Computing. His speech was all about 100 ideas that changed the web. He shared 10 of his favourite ideas. We found out about the history of the computer mouse and the wonderful Tim Berners Lee who created the very first web browser!

Our day was split into 3 sessions. Our first session was HTML WebMaker, where we learnt the basics of HTML and created a text based website in just 45 minutes! HTML? What's that? It means Hypertext Markup Language and it is one of many 'programming languages' used to write websites. We had a brilliant time working from behind the scenes of a website. 

The second session was a Computing History Workshop. We took a trip back in time and learnt how to program using BBC computers, remember them? We wrote a computer program which taught the computer how to count and we were able to create a program on a classic number guessing game. We found it interesting to see how much one idea changed the world: computers. The children were shocked to find there was no mouse to navigate the screen. It was really funny when they were asked to turn the page and they all looked for a way to 'turn the page on the screen' until the tutor told them he meant turn the page of the instruction booklet they had been given. 

The third session was all about Networks and the web. We learnt how interconnected the web really is. This was a fun, practical session that we thoroughly enjoyed. It interesting to find out how countries are connected to each other. We also learnt how to connect to the internet without using wifi, we had to use a server. 

At the end of the conference, we all met up and took part in a 'Think In' session where we had to answer questions about the web, for example: Do young people use the web in a different way to their parents and older people, and in what way? What will the internet be like when you are 50? Should people in charge be able to control or block access to the internet?  We got the opportunity to play with some computers from the 1970s up until modern times. Miss Darrell got very excited when she saw a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Remember them?

We had a brilliant time and cannot wait for the next conference.