In December 2015, I have helped a fellow Computer Science student from Manchester University with her final year project. I was part of the organization and execution of a school visit workshop in Smolyan, Bulgaria.

The main purpose of the visit was to show how exciting computing is and encourage more schoolchildren to choose those qualifications at school and at university and as a future career path. Teaching the children programming basics and showing them Virtual Reality as a concept was truly inspiring.

Here are a few photos from the school visit:

A few lines from the project overview, written by Lora:

The aims of the project are:

• To inspire school students between the ages eleven and seventeen and give them an opportunity to understand fundamental concepts in Computer Science
• To attract students different in age, abilities and gender, especially focusing on gender balance
• To create a flexible workshop with independent parts and supporting materials which can be used by students, university staff and teachers for future outreach events.

This project delivered a workshop consisting of:

• A virtual reality game, a software application developed in Unity Game Engine integrating Oculus Rift headset, which introduces school students to virtual reality, data structure and Human-computer Interaction has been developed.
• An introductory talk and supporting materials which can be used by the supervisor of the activity.

The activity was delivered to school students from 20 different schools in the UK and one school in Smolyan, Bulgaria. In addition, the project was demonstrated at outreach events organised by The University of Manchester and the Computing At School.

You can find out more about the author and the project at Lora ‘s linkedin.