Tech Week 2015 (26th April - 2nd May) was celebrated in Science and Computer classes with students getting hands-on experience of a Raspberry Pi micro-computer, playing a piano made of celery sticks using MaKey MaKey and playing spelling games with Osmo, an iPad game. 5th Year student Rory Murphy and 1st Year student Alan Farrell recount their impressions of these technologies.
For Technology Week, I was fortunate enough to attempt to use a Raspberry Pi, a hand sized computer which can be connected to any monitor or T.V. It is an interesting device that is used to promote coding for all ages, running programs such as Scratch, and Python as well as containing standard computer features such as internet exploration. While I was barely able to use the coding to open Scratch and the help menu, people have been able to make a wide variety of interesting devices from musical instruments such as thermions, to tweeting birdhouses. While it involves a lot of practice, I enjoyed my experience with the Raspberry Pi.
Rory Murphy (5th Year)
The MaKey MaKey was very interesting. We decided that one person would hold the metal part (the earth) and then 15 of us would make a human chain to see if we could make the celery make a noise by letting the electricity flow through us all. We also downloaded the Tech Week App onto our own tablets.
Alan Farrell (1st Year)
The 1st years completed a zombie lab today where they used their scientific methods and thinking to identify patient zero from the zombie suspects. Using measuring skills, pH, observation skills and much more they successfully identified the source of the outbreak!
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The TY Horticulture class were out in the Autumn sunshine planting Spring bulbs using the chaos planting method. This is when a multitude of different spring bulbs (Hyacinths, Daffodils, Tulips, Crocuses, Narcissi) are mixed together and randomly planted so that we have a mixture of flowers and patterns emerging in the spring. It mimics nature and so is more enticing to pollinators and native insects that need the food in Spring.
Stratford is celebrating Maths Week 2026 (12th - 18th October) with daily activities around the school, at breaktimes and in Maths classes! The tutor-time daily quiz is proving to be extremely competitive as each form group tries to solve it and then run to find Ms Matthews in order to win the box of chocolates!
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