‘Hack-her-thon’ event motivates young women at Wayland Academy to pursue careers in STEM

Recently, a number of our Year 10 students excitedly attended a two-day 'Hack-her-thon' hosted at Norwich High School for Girls that was set up to inspire the next generation of women to pursue a career in the tech industry. 

A fantastic experience for the young girls of our academy, the ‘Hack-her-thon’ was filled with a range of activities that included everything from workshops and tech-based design tasks through to interactive panels and Q&A sessions.

During the event, students were divided into mixed-school groups, giving pupils the opportunity to work with young women from other local schools on designing an app, while being supported by a range of expert mentors spanning a range of STEM-based roles. The app the students were asked to create had to have sustainability at its core and coincided brilliantly with all the work we are doing within Wayland Academy and across all of the Inspiration Trust on the importance of reducing our carbon footprint and helping the environment. Our students followed the design process, starting with the generation of ideas before shaping their concept and developing this into code all ahead of presenting their proposals to the judges. Our students did brilliantly and we were all extremely impressed with their creations. 

Alongside the more practical elements of the event, our students were also able to meet with a number of women working in the computer science sector, hearing from them about their careers. There was a focus on helping girls across Norfolk understand the importance of increasing the number of women working within computer science and other STEM roles and how collaboration can aid society.

The event closed with a fantastic talk from the keynote speaker, David Willis. With an impressive background that spans working with NASA, developing software for healthcare and radiation monitoring, as well as modelling the ocean and its effects on climate change, it was an awe-inspiring discussion to be part of for our students that highlighted how the power of coding can be used to solve real-world problems.

Overall, the 'Hack-her-thon' was an excellent opportunity for our students to learn more about the tech industry and gain valuable experience in app development, aligning with our trust-wide mission to increase the confidence of our young women to take up STEM subjects. 

Crystal, a student at Wayland Academy said: 

 “[The event was] really good and interesting and we learnt new things”.  

Joanna, a student at Wayland Academy said: 

“I enjoyed the fact that it was inclusive and everyone had a part”.

We certainly hope that we can attend another ‘Hack-her-thon’ in the future and will continue our passion for STEM within our school.