Computer Science Students Visit Orion Health

Recently our two Year 13 Computer Science classes had the opportunity to visit Orion Health to participate in an ‘Agile Project Management’ workshop. The workshop was tailor-made for our Saint Kentigern students as they are using this methodology for their self-selected year-long Digital Technology Level 3 projects.

Here’s what the students had to say about the experience:

Orion Health is a company dedicated to the engineering of software to improve the care of health in a multitude of countries worldwide. While there, we were presented the intricacies of agile project development that is being implemented within Orion Health by staff who are involved and enthusiastic of its comparative innovation to previous methodologies such as waterfall.

Following that, we were given the chance to try our own agile sprint situation from which we were given a group task to design ‘something for 5 people to live in!’  As we designed, we could return and present our progress so far. Specific constructive criticisms were provided so we could return to the drawing board before presenting again.  At the end of each review, an extra requirement would be added, as the project became further and further developed. This was all done in the pursuit of stimulating, and thus helping us understand, an ideal implementation of Agile within the development of a project.

As a lot of students in our year are working on raspberry pi projects, we were also shown several projects given to their employees during the week of the Codeworx challenge presentation. We found that very little past knowledge of python would be needed in such python based projects, as according to the staff, it can be learnt and implemented from the basics up relatively quickly. This was great advice to hear and I will remember this to use in my own raspberry pi project in the future.
Sam Weston, Year 13

Our class went to Orion Health to learn about project management and other aspects of technology related concepts, helping us with our projects for computer science. We spoke with Mr Third about agile project management and SCRUM. From this talk I learned quite a bit more about agile and I got a better understanding how this methodology works for Orion Health software development and design teams. We also spoke to an in-house software engineer who talked about a raspberry pi project on which he had worked on. After asking a few questions and getting some tips we were told about job opportunities after college and university.  We got a tour of the workplace and it was really interesting seeing all the people working with SCRUM boards, just as we do in class on our projects.
Charlie Rillstone, Year 13

COMPUTER SCIENCE at SAINT KENTIGERN
Computer Science is offered at Year 12 and Year 13, building on Level 1 Digital Technology  with the aim to teach students to about design, logical reasoning and problem solving – all transferrable skills beyond the Computer Science classroom. The ability to create and adapt new technologies, distinguishes computer science from computer literacy. Students apply advanced website and programming skills towards real world application in context. They are introduced to networking protocols, graphics and visual computing algorithms to complement their existing knowledge.