I wrote a really long post about my reflections of the Summer School, but it’s not a quick read by any means so here’s a shorter version. I would like to imagine that people reading this are actually about to join the Horizon CDT and will be encouraged to go to the DEN Summer School next year. I honestly didn’t know what to expect and with these sorts of things I try to keep an open mind and hope to be impressed. I was and a learned a lot. Not to mention that I left with some new friends and motivation to carry on with my work.
So this year it was hosted by Loughborough CDT EI at their London Campus which is based at the Olympic Park so it was a great venue!
Each of the three days had a theme. 1) Learning 2) Doing 3) Practising (although from working in a pedagogy lab – I’d argue that doing and practising it also learning, but hey ho).
On the ‘learning’ day I participated in the plenary panel that discussed skills needed for jobs in the knowledge society. I also, joined in the Lego Cybersecurity workshop which was hands-on and pretty fun! I learned more about some of the technicalities of cybersecurity which is always welcome to a layperson such as myself.
On the ‘doing’ day, I tried my hand at data visualising with Tableau. This was hugely out of my comfort zone, but I got stuck in and found myself really enjoying it and hoping I can visualise some data of my own soon!
The final ‘practising’ day I learned all about ‘best practice’ of creating posters which is something that I am going to need to do at some point in my career. I drafted up a poster of my own and presented it to the group in the afternoon.
Obviously these are the day activities. In the evenings we ate, we drank, we played ping pong, invented new drinks and generally relaxed. It was so great hearing about other people’s work and finding a way to talk about my own to people in a completely different field.
I’d highly recommend going to the summer school. It takes you out of your comfort zone, but it’s a safe and warm environment to experiment and fail.
… The invented drink is Gin & Watermelon slushie. Also known as Glushies.
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