Colwyn Technologies, Flywheel’s education division, attended the Springwest Academy careers day in September 2022. We were overwhelmed by the enthusiasm, especially when things turned into a lesson in binary problem solving!
We were represented by the head of our HR department, Donna MacDonald, and by Tim Hudson who is our account manager at Springwest.
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“We were on site to talk to the pupils from Year 10 to Year 13,” explains Donna, “to give them advice on IT careers and general career advice. We talked them through the types of roles that are available in IT, the apprenticeships we offer and how careers in IT can progress.
We set up an IT puzzle activity which challenged the children with combination locks, each with a different combination to open it. The children had to work out what the combination was of one lock, unlock it and then they would win a Lolly. We gave them the numbers in binary, with an easy question and a hard question for each lock to accommodate the different ages.
During the day, we were pleased to see that lots of children managed to decipher the binary numbers, and especially pleased that around ten of them did so by tackling the hard question.
Things became extra lively when the computer science teacher heard we were offering binary challenges. She brought her A-Level students down to see us during their lesson, as she wanted them to solve the hard questions to unlock the padlocks. We’re happy to report that they all managed it!
We also enjoyed seeing some children teaching their friends and classmates how to use binary so that they could work out for themselves how to solve the padlock combination: a perfect example of professional teamwork at its best!
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“Some of the children resorted to using Google to help solve the puzzle,” says Tim, “where they had a crash course in binary! We certainly would not consider this cheating. Being able to solve IT challenges by researching independently online is one of the important skills for success in an IT career.”
For more information on how we can support careers events or organise activity days to help your school raise interest in IT careers, please get in touch.
About us
Flywheel IT Services has teams of highly qualified and experienced IT engineers and consultants around the UK. For over 20 years we have partnered with businesses, schools and major construction companies to guide and support their projects, tech strategies and day-to-day operations.
In an average year we help 200 businesses use technology for fast-track growth, we design sustainable ICT infrastructures for 100 new schools and commercial buildings, and we nurture the ICT resources and dreams of 33,000 school children.
