News from Digital Technologies

Shadow Tech

Shadow Tech is an initiative run by Techwoman and NZTech to encourage girls in the technology sector by connecting with community industries. This year we visited Spark. Sixteen year 10 and 11 girls all studying Digital Technologies set off at 9am into Hamilton city to the brand new Spark Precinct building. We started with a tour of the building including the NOC (Network Operations Center) where a team of people make sure all the cables and cell sites which provide us with the internet are still all connected and working at full capacity. Then we heard from Amanda and Celene who have worked their way into high level Tech roles and are well respected in the industry, they were very inspiring. Amanda even showed us how she designs customised chatbots for clients. It was a great experience for the girls. Thanks, Spark, for having us.

Robocup regionals

On Saturday 3rd August Hillcrest High School hosted the Waikato Regional Robocup competition. This competition is having to re-grow in momentum post covid and is the first run since 2019. Robocup is open to students of all ages and abilities and can use any pre-programmable robot. Despite the small numbers all the participants all had a great time. We were fortunate to have Bill from the RoboCup association come and run a workshop both during the competition and for teachers on the Monday following. We hope to see many more students from both Hillcrest High and contributing schools at next year’s competition. Well done to Taira and Tokusho who entered the Rescue category representing Hillcrest High.

Programming competition

The national programming competition was held on Saturday 17th August at 6 different sites around the country. It has a number of entry categories including Secondary and Tertiary students and an Open category for competitors who are no longer students. Participants are able to work in teams of up to 3 on a single computer to solve challenging problems in a programming language they are most familiar with including C, C++, C#, Java and Python. The Hillcrest High School team consisting of William, Yusuf and Hector gave their best as the only secondary team at the Waikato Uni Site gaining a respectable 23 points. This event has strong links to our school with Hillcrest High alumni Tom Levi runs the Waikato event and Daniel Stokes who also took part. Further away another group of Hillcrest Alumni, Tana, Sam and Josh also participated from the Canterbury site.