IBM Blue Fusion Event

On Tuesday 19^th March, nine schools competed in the IBM Blue Fusion event. Six excited Wildern girls took part and had to compete in six different activities testing skills ranging from mathematical to scientific to computational. Here’s what happened as the blood pressure began to rise….

The day started with a talk from Dale Lane about the IBM computer Watson. This computer took part in American hit quiz show Jeopardy and managed to beat two of the best competitors – ending the show with a score of more than a combined score of the two opponents!

It was straight onto activity one next. The girls were unsure of the activity, I quote “Oh no, not programming!!”. However, they worked as a team and absolutely nailed the activity – achieving a high score of 1300, putting them in first place already!

The second activity involved playing a game with 12 levels – the girls were the first group of the day to get the twelfth level – go girls! This activity kept Wildern in first place.

The third activity involved two Wii remotes, three laptops, a pirate ship and lots of communication. The girls had to work in pairs - Ella and Grace, Olivia and Rhiannon and Naomi and Chloe. The 5,4,3,2… 1 countdown from Naomi and Chloe to ensure that they pushed their buttons at the same time worked well and meant that the girls were STILL in first place.

The fourth activity involved Science (thank goodness I had five triple scientists on the team!!). The event involved one pair creating vaccine, one team organizing where the vaccine went and one team moving the vaccine around. Even though the girls did really well, we had dropped down to third place – Harrow Way Community School were 20 points ahead! How did this happen!?!

The fifth activity involved more coding (“no – not more coding!!”) and, surprise surprise, the girls did well again. The girls navigated their avatars around different levels on an interactive game and got 90% - on a coding activity. Shock, horror! “Ah, so coding isn’t really that hard then?”. We were back up in second place! Six points away from the top!

The sixth – and final – activity involved lots of fun ‘games’ on a table. Time was up but the girls still wanted to know how the laser shone off of nine mirrors. Now that is eager!!

The last percentage could not be revealed, as the results were to be a surprise……….

First, to run through what the students had learnt today. The slide below shows the extent of this. The girls couldn't believe that they had been primarily computer programming without even realising it.  

Harrow Way Community School won and Wildern came second. The girls lept up to the stage to collect their second place prizes and very graciously congratulated their rival team. I told them that I was proud of what they had achieved in such a short space of time and asked them if they were happy. “Yes, really happy – the winners got exactly the same goodie bags as us!”.