A group of the year 14 Double Award ICT class, Mrs Stuart and I attended the FemininITy conference in Belfast‘s Waterfront Hall on Friday 9th October. The aim of this conference was to empower girls to fulfil their potential in the world of Information Computing Technology and it didn‘t disappoint.
With rousing opening talks from Caitriona Ruane (Minister for Education), Rose Crozier (Belfast City Council) and Joanne Stuart (IOD) the mood was set for what would be a day celebrating the success of women in what has traditional been such a male dominated industry.
Our group attended lectures and workshop facilitated by Queen‘s University and Microsoft. In these sessions the pupils were introduced to courses and job opportunities that are routed firmly in ICT. The pupils were particularly taken by the various robots and interesting ICT based inventions such the two wheeled Segway, which a few of the pupils and I had fun trying out.
The closing speaker from Microsoft painted a bright future for women in the world of ICT and helped to inspire the pupils with stories of how she and other females have succeeded at Microsoft.
The girls really enjoyed the day and came back to school fired up to get working on their UCAS applications and book their places in the future of the ICT workplace. Many thanks to Glengormley High School for organising the event.
