Hain Daniels who make sweet spreads and jellies including Hartley’s jams and jellies, Gale’s honey, Rose’s and Robertsons marmalades in the Histon factory, are looking for several roles including this.
Senior NPD Technologist – Own Label the key responsibilities and accountability of this temporary role include Project Management, Concept Development, Process Development, Customer relationship & management
Two outstanding coding students from Histon are in the winning team for the regional round of the 2021 LEGO League Challenge and are now set to compete at national level. Amanda Borrill shares the story :
On 24th June, the fourth Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) LEGO® League Challenge, a global science and technology tournament for 9 – 16 year olds, saw seven teams of school children from across Cambridgeshire come together to engage in research, problem-solving, coding, and engineering – building and programming a LEGO robot that navigates the missions of a robot game. Part of the FIRST LEGO League Challenge RePLAYSM season, teams participating in the Innovation Project were tasked with identifying problems related to human inactivity, researching the problem and designing a new piece of technology, or improving an existing one.
Taking place virtually for the first time this year, the event saw teams joining live remote sessions with a panel of industry judges from companies including: Qualcomm Technologies International, Ltd., Arm, Marshall, Capgemini and Evonetix, as well as the University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering.
Representing Team CERC from Cambourne Electronics and Robotics Club, were keen young coders Avni and Aaron Balan from Histon and, as overall winners of the regional Champion’s Award, the team will now go on to compete in the National finals on July 2nd.
Getting competitive
Year 8 Impington Village College student, Avni, and her Year 6 Histon and Impington Junior School brother, Aaron, are well known locally for their coding skills and their love of sharing this passion with others. I asked them how they heard about the competition and what was involved:
“As we were both always interested in coding, we joined a coding club in Cambourne called Cambourne Electronics and Robotics Club (CERC). Through that Club we came to know about this LEGO League and joined the team for this year’s competition.
“On the day of the competition, we were asked to show our Robot design and explain to the judging panel the reason for that specific design. To gain more points, we also needed to programme the Robot to complete all the set missions within the allocated time.
“After the Robot Run, for the Innovation Project, we needed to demonstrate our solution and explain to the judges why we chose this particular solution. The Judges then asked questions about the Robot design, the Innovation Projects and the Core Value of the Team which can lead to more points for your team”.
As winners of the Regional Champion’s Award, Team CERC will now compete with all Regional Champions at a National level where two winning teams will be selected. Those two teams will then go to the USA to compete in the Global Challenge!
The next level
I asked Avni and Aaron if they were able to reveal what ideas they have stored up for the next level and to share a few competition highlights:
“We’re planning on modifying our Robot game to get more points and making our Innovation Project presentation smoother. As we are all from different schools, meeting up is a challenge and Sundays tend to be the only day we can all meet.
“As we are new members for the Team our focus was to observe and learn about the Robot design. But our strength is coding, so when it came to coding the Robot we contributed quite a lot. Also for the innovation project, we came up with lots of ideas and implemented them. The best part was having fun with the little drama we sketched to showcase our app for the Innovation Project solution called ‘Get back your Back’ – an app we developed to tell computer users about their sitting posture and whether it is good or bad!”
Avni shares a few of her personal thoughts from the experience:
“The thing I enjoyed most about being part of the team was what I was able to learn about construction and innovation. I learned about how effective different structures are in different situations and, in the Innovation Project, I helped us find a final project to present to the judges. It was especially fun being able to do this with my teammates, and working as a team with them taught me so much”.
Sharing the knowledge
Avni and Aaron began their coding journeys aged 9 and 7, respectively. Running workshops to share their knowledge is a real passion for them both and they are optimistic that, as COVID restrictions ease further, they will be able to get more involved with some local coding activities. It is hoped that, once the library reopens, they will be able to find a space to run regular weekend coding workshops showing others that coding is not only easier than you might think, but also a very enjoyable thing to do. Both children have already run workshops for the local Guides, Brownies and Cubs and these were received warmly across the community by both children and parents with, in Aaron’s words “some nice emails sent to my Dad about the experience”.
Furthermore, after their success in this competition, Impington Village College (IVC) is really keen to establish their own team and has asked Avni to help them set it up. The Head of Computer Science, Mr Gee, is very keen to make this possible and confident that, for next year, there will be a team from IVC to compete in this challenge.
Into the future
One thing seems certain, both these children are not sitting still for long and I asked them both to share a little of their ambitions for the future:
Aaron – “I am passionate about maths and would like to study more advanced maths and do some research about abstract maths, where you aren’t working with concrete numbers. I also enjoy learning physics (mainly quantum mechanics) and generally STEM subjects. I also do Taekwon-Do and am shortly going for a grading. Hopefully then, I will be just two belts from achieving my black belt”.
And from Avni – “I really enjoy teaching programming and having fun with my family. I probably want to become an app developer, or a solicitor, maybe an agile coach like my mum, who knows. But I do know I’ll always work hard to make time for what I love. As a Taekwon-Do student, I’m keen on learning self defence and developing my agility and strength, but as a chorister with St Catharine’s College girls’ choir, I like singing and broadening my vocal range. I enjoy learning new things too; new coding concepts, how the UK law and courts work, electricity physics and circuits, chemicals. It’s all very random but I enjoy it. I hope I get to teach more young people different things about programming and technology. I’ve run a few workshops before, and even ran a school club which was successful for a while. One of my proudest moments though was entering our local Girl guides into Mission: ZERO which involved writing a small piece of code to be sent up to the International Space Station’s AstroPi!”
For anyone who might be thinking of taking part in next year’s tournament, the theme for the IET FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge 2021-22 season has now been announced: Cargo Connect. More information on how to register can be found here.
The Internet Watch Foundation on the Vision Park are recruiting for 2 roles.
Image Classification Assessor to grade and hash two million images showing the sexual abuse of children.£16,506 per annum + benefits | Part-time 20 hours per week Mon – Fri 10am – 2pm
Policy and Public Affairs Assistant with an interest in politics and policy development and some understanding of some of the policy challenges facing the technology sector. The role will support the Policy and Public Affairs Manager in the daily engagements with Government Departments and stakeholders as well as contributing to the wider policy and public affairs function of the IWF. This will require travel to regular meetings and events in London and Brussels as and when required. Salary is £25,978 to £31,391 and closing date for applications is Friday 8 January 2021.