Over half term, a group of our ICT students visited paris to attend the ‘ICT Live!’ conference. The group had plenty of time to take in the sites and sounds of the city of lights, including a River Cruise on the beautiful Seine where our pupils we learnt about the history of Notre Dame Cathedral, Eiffel Tower, the Louvre Museum and the city’s many grand bridges.

Our students were lucky enough to stay at  the Disney Cheyenne Hotel which was Cowboy themed, and was less than 5 minutes away from the Disney parks on a shuttle bus.After check in our group went and explore the rides and attractions of the Disneyland Parks. As it grew darker the Disneyland Parks lit up which added to the magic and looked beautiful. Miss Davies and Mr Bunn especially had great fun and were often first in line for the different rides!  It was lovely to see so many of the girls wearing their Mouse ears and the boys with their Mouse gloves and Goofy hats – really getting into the spirt of Disney.    

On Monday afternoon our group attended the ICT & Computing LIVE! Conference which was at the Gaumont Cinema in the Disney Village. There were many other Schools and colleges also there and our students were very well behaved throughout. There were three main speakers at the conference Geoff White— Channel 4 Technology Journalist & Producer, Joe McEwan—Head of Brand and Social Media at innocent and Gemma Milne—Tech Innovation Strategist Ogilvy Labs.

Geoff spoke about the impact of sharing too much of your data can be dangerous and how we don’t always know where all of our data is actually going. This was to encourage to the students to be smart about how they use their digital devices but also be aware of their digital surroundings and how easy it is for people to find information from you.

Gemma spoke about upcoming job opportunities which do not exist yet and encouraged all of the students to think outside of the box when it comes to technology and mainly focused on the developments with Virtual Reality and Space.

The most influential speaker was Joe, he spoke to the students about how Social Media is now used by many businesses to promote their products, interact with their customer but also considered when hiring potential new employees. He encouraged students to consider their online presence and gave advice on how they could use the world on social media to their benefit when looking at colleges and careers.      

Our staff and students had a magnificent time, with excellent behaviour all round. We look forward to returning again next year!