I spent a week at the University of York on a Headstart course - it was in the Computer Science department, so it was a week beginning to learn Prolog and use Alice software. The only downside i could notice was that the university seemed to see it as a week to advertise themselves to me, and i really hate advertising.

Nevertheless, it was so incredibly worth it: the student helpers (Louis, Matt, Rana) were great fun and something i’ve started to notice is that at every university i’ve been to so far, all the undergraduates are all enthusiastic about their course. They even went and set up a Facebook group to post photos and keep in touch after the week.

On Tuesday the 3rd we had a good speech from Helen Bowyer, who works in the emerging technology department at IBM - she spoke on getting information to and from mobile devices via bluetooth, as well as accessibility and technology for disabled people. The connection here is that she is was a recent graduate from York University.

The next day we had a fantastic lecture from Professor John Clarke (ex-government advisor) on security. Some memorable quotes:

• “There is no such thing as privacy anymore” - very topical given the current attitudes towards social networking websites
• “People are not your best asset, they are your worst nightmare” - the example he gave was holding open locked doors for the person behind you. This is very appropriate as it has happened at school a few times now, resulting in the theft of phones/laptops.

I just plain loved it.

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I posted this on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 at 10:57, under Education.