Viewing archives for Academic enrichment

After a busy spring of online competitions, the Summer Term opens with all four QE teams now qualified for this year’s VEX EDR Robotics World Championship.

Hyperdrive and Override first reached the virtual international finals next month and then Tempest and Hybrid safely made it through, too, reports QE’s Head of Technology Michael Noonan.

Their achievement capped a term that saw the School host two successful international remote robotics events.

Head of Technology Michael Noonan said: “Both events saw the QE teams demonstrating great problem-solving, teamwork and communication skills as they made lots of last-minute adjustments online in order to optimise their robots or deal with technical faults.

“Boys are very happy that they can physically work on their robots now we are back in School. Everyone is looking forward to the world championship, and, with restrictions now beginning to ease, we are all hoping for more events before the end of the year, too.”

Teams from Canada, Taiwan, the US and UK, including one from QE, took part in the first QE-hosted event, which was held during lockdown.

The second QE event was a bigger remote skills tournament close to the end of the Spring Term. Twelve places were available, three-quarters of which were reserved for UK teams. Hyperdrive, competing in their first event, represented QE, together with Override and Tempest. Hybrid were unavailable. The QE teams took on five UK and three US teams close to the end of the Spring Term.

Each robot first had to pass an inspection before taking the field. Conducted over Zoom, the competition involved each team having 30 minutes to try to complete three ‘driver’ runs (where the robot is controlled by a driver using a remote control) and three ‘programming’ runs (where the robot moves around the field based on pre-programming – so once it starts there is nothing more you can do).

When competing on their own in such events (as opposed to directly against another team on the field of play, as would happen in an ‘in-person’ competition), the aim is to amass the highest score by picking up red balls and tipping them into the goals, while also ‘de-scoring’ as many blue balls as possible, dislodging these from the bottom of the goal stacks.

The winners were one of the two teams competing from Galion High School from the small city of Galion in the state of Ohio; they scored 110 points in the driving section and 45 points in the autonomous control section. The remaining US team were an independent team from Newnan, Georgia, who were placed second in the competition, with a score of 114 for driving and 28 for autonomous control (and were competing from a garage at 6.30am local time!).

The highest-placed UK team went to an independent team, which included one QE pupil, Year 11’s Yash Shah.

QE’s Tempest team came fourth with their highest score to date – a “highly respectable 122 points in total; 95 in driver and 27 in programming”, said Mr Noonan.

The event was administered by Mr Noonan, with Technology teachers Stephanie Tomlinson and Shane Maheady, and Technology assistant Jemima Snelson, handling the refereeing and scorekeeping.

Competition continued even on the very last day of term, when all the QE teams competed in a UK live remote skills event hosted by the Vex Robotics Training Academy in Warrington. Tempest and Override came third and fourth, with total scores of 132 and 113 respectively.

When the Spring Term lockdown forced a sudden end to rehearsals for the School play, QE’s young actors harnessed technology so that they could still perform to an audience.

With the help of QE’s resident Theatre Director, Gavin Molloy, members of the Year 8 drama club learned, staged and filmed dramatic monologues from home .

And, after weeks of preparation and practice, at the end of term, their highly varied work was revealed to classmates, staff and parents alike as the monologues went live.

Crispin Bonham-Carter, Assistant Head (Pupil Involvement) said: “The speeches were taken from a range of classic and modern texts by authors ranging from Charles Dickens to Michael Morpurgo. The boys went to great lengths creating costumes, props and backdrops in their own homes.”

The recorded Zoom videos were put together in an online showcase, which was watched in School by boys during form time and has now been published for parents on the School’s eQE online platform.

Fifteen boys took part in the showcase, which was split into two halves for the presentation on eQE.

Their selections drew on some of the best-known authors and stories from the history of English literature. Ash Iyer performed from Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None; Soham Kale read from An Inspector Calls by J B Priestley; Simi Bloom picked one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous stories, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and Adi Dhan chose Dickens’ Great Expectations.

But more modern authors were certainly not forgotten: Aadam Aslan’s monologue was taken from Michael Morpurgo’s Private Peaceful. Keon Robert performed from The Class, by playwright and Game of Thrones actor Luke Barnes, while Karan Somani performed an excerpt from Roy Williams’ play about boxing and racism, Sucker Punch.

One boy, William Joanes, read from the play that was postponed, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, based on Mark Haddon’s novel of the same name.

With lockdown over, full-scale rehearsals to put on this award-winning play resumed towards the end of term. It will be staged in June as the 2021 School Play.

Sixth-form economists turned out in force for a lunchtime Zoom talk on ‘Covid-19 and the Economy’ from a leading Oxford economist.

The speaker, Michael McMahon, Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford and Senior Research Fellow at St Hugh’s College, is a leading expert on communications in central banks. His interests also lie in monetary economics, fiscal policy, business cycles, and applied econometrics. He worked at the Bank of England for many years and now serves as a member of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council.

Professor McMahon is also a Lead Editor of the Economics Observatory, a website that seeks to make economic research and government policy accessible to the general public, to which his latest contributions have focused on understanding the effect of the current pandemic on the UK economy.

His talk was given to QE’s Economics Group: Advanced Lectures – an enrichment activity targeted at those wishing to read the subject at the best Economics departments in UK universities. It was organised by Economics teacher Gustavo Ornelas-Almaraz following an initial approach to Professor McMahon by Year 12 pupil Ethan John. After Professor McMahon finished his presentation, there was a short period for questions.

Dr Ornelas-Almaraz praised the strong attendance at the event, especially given that it was held on a Wednesday – a day when many of QE’s sixth-formers are free to leave early. “The talk was both well attended and well received by our Year 12 economists. “

“They were particularly attentive to the portions of Professor McMahon’s lecture in which he laid emphasis on how the current economic situation will impact young people as they are thinking about their job prospects for the future.

“In all, it was an interesting and timely talk to our Economics students, and I am grateful to Professor McMahon for the time he spent in preparing and delivering his presentation; we have invited him to visit us in person in Barnet when the time is right.

“I have shared the resources that Professor McMahon provided amongst the students, and I am sure they will use them in their preparation for their A-level exam next year.”

Economics is a popular choice of degree subject at QE. Of this year’s 39 Oxbridge offers, seven are to read Economics at Cambridge, while one boy has an offer to read Economics & Management and another to study Politics, Philosophy & Economics, both at Oxford.

Renowned saxophonist, composer and educator Mike Hall kept QE’s senior musicians on their toes with a masterclass on jazz improvisation.

His hour-long, richly illustrated, online talk focused on examples of improvisation by two of the jazz greats, Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis.

The boys now have a couple of weeks to submit recordings of their own improvisations before Mike runs another two masterclasses in which he will offer them direct feedback on their work.

Director of Music Ruth Partington said: “This was a great event and we are very lucky to be able to welcome a player of Mike’s stature ‘to’ QE. At this time of year, we would normally be holding our annual Jazz Evening, so the timing of this first masterclass was particularly appropriate.

“Mike’s talk combined the perfect mix of approachability with some challenging concepts for our advanced students. He talked about how to improvise over chords using the notes of the chord, about guide tones and about specific scales such as minor pentatonics.

“And he included some live demonstrations on Zoom: it was wonderful to hear him play.

“The audience clearly enjoyed his presentation, and there were some interesting questions at the end.”

The class briefly covered the history of jazz, with Mike stressing that it is an “aural music…[that] should be learned initially by listening to and emulating great players”. He moved on to the specifics of improvisation, including the need to acquire the requisite skills, such as “strengthening the connection between your ears and fingers”.

Mike was Head of Jazz Studies at the Royal Northern College of Music for 20 years, during which time he directed well over 100 concerts with the RNCM Big Band.  He still teaches at the RNCM and has also taught at many jazz summer schools and been a consultant and composer for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM – a Music examinations board).

He began with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra and then spent 20 years with Michael Garrick, the late English jazz pianist and composer – a period which saw them tour Malaysia as well as make several CD recordings and national radio broadcasts.

Today, Mike is a regular member of the Echoes of Ellington Orchestra and runs his own jazz duo, quartet and octet, for which he also writes.

A video of the masterclass can be seen on the QE Music department’s YouTube channel.

A QE team have won the Year 11 category in the Bank of England’s schools film competition with their analysis of the likely lasting effects of the pandemic on business and employment.

Abir Mohammed, Dhruv Syam and Ansh Jassra put together a polished three-minute film featuring footage from around the world on the competition theme of The changing workplace: same spaces, new realities. The 2020 competition, entitled Bank Camera, Action, challenged entrants to explore the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the way we work, on jobs and on the economy.

Congratulating the boys on their success, the judges in the annual competition said they enjoyed watching the boys’ film, The Bank of QE, and were impressed by their filmmaking skills.

QE teacher of Economics Krishna Shah said: “I am extremely proud of the three of them and delighted that all their hard work in putting the film together has been rewarded.”

All three boys took on the role of producer, with Abir also acting as editor, while Dhruv was the narrator and Abir and Ansh were both interviewed on-camera.

The film looked at the possible permanent impacts of the pandemic both on individuals and on different sectors of the economy. The boys stated, for example, that:

• Those without access to the technology needed for remote working could lose out, leading to a possible rise in inequality;
• Small firms could find themselves unable to compete with large businesses on economies of scale;
• Unlike those in “on-line service hubs”, such as London, people living in areas of the country concentrated on manufacturing could find it difficult to work from home, putting such areas at risk of mass unemployment and poverty.

It considered the environmental benefits of reduced levels of commuting and outlined possible technological solutions to the difficulties in maintaining work-life balance that working from home often entails, such as using separate electronic devices for work and personal life and screen-time blocking apps.

And Dhruv added: “New technologies have the potential to transform the future of work – things like low-latency whiteboards and faster 5G internet completely bringing back the spontaneity of the office.

“Ultimately, the question is not whether remote working is here to stay, but to what extent.

“Most firms will choose a mixture of both [office working and working from home], but even small shifts in global work patterns will have a profound effect on all our lives. Let’s see what the future holds,” Dhruv concluded.

They won £300 for the School to spend on filmmaking equipment, as well as a £25 Amazon eGift voucher each and a certificate signed by Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey.

• The film may be viewed on the Bank of England’s competition web page here.

The latest episode of the Roundness podcast series from The Queen’s Library highlights the grave unintended consequences that can arise from man-made changes to the environment.

Podcaster Surya Bowyer, QE’s Head of Library Services, warns that we disregard the “interconnectedness of the world’s natural systems” at our peril in a 36-minute episode that features a variety of expert voices and spans the globe, from Egypt and Ethiopia to France and Spain, and from the Amazon to the US.

But he begins the episode in one particular location, inviting his listeners to consider the extraordinary case of the pupfish – in fact, of one specific pupfish whom he names ‘Steve’. Steve, he explains, is a Sonoyta pupfish, a rare and threatened breed that is specially adapted to cope with the harsh conditions – extreme heat, very salty water and lack of oxygen – found in the waterways of the Sonoran desert straddling Mexico and Arizona. It is thought to live in an area covering only around four square miles.

“What Steve ‘knows’ is that during the breeding season, his scales turn an intense bright blue in an attempt to try and woo Linda, Brenda and the other pupfish,” Mr Bowyer says.

Understanding Steve’s remarkable metabolism – including his ability to produce alcohol – could hold benefits for medical science, Mr Bowyer says. “By considering the pupfish we could gain a better understanding of cancer cells.”

Yet, he says, the Sonoyta pupfish’s very existence is threatened by the damage done to the environment by the construction of the border wall ordered by former US President Donald Trump.

Mr Bowyer then looks at the negative effects that overlooking environmental issues has had across the world and throughout history. He recounts the fatal outcome for one 12^th-century French nobleman poisoned by another type of fish living in a polluted environment.

And he reflects on the changes in economics – a discipline which used to characterise environmental concerns as mere ‘negative externalities’, but is now increasingly understanding that the unexpected knock-on effects of pollution make it impossible to regard environmental factors in isolation.

The Consider the pupfish episode of the Roundness podcast is available from the Library pages of the eQE online platform and from normal podcast providers, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.