First Technology Transfer

Standard and Advanced Technical Training, Consultancy and Mentoring

FTT together with Croydon Tutorial College has developed a series of programming workshops for gifted and ambitious young programmers that go beyond GCSE and A Level Computer science.These workshops can be taken individually or in combination. Each workshop runs as a 5 day workshop. The aim of these workshops is to provide an introduction to topics that are not ordinarily taught or covered in the typical school curriculum. Although they deal with quite advanced topics they have been designed to be understandable by most able students who have just completed their GCSEs, or have completed their first year in the 6th form. They may also be of interest to technically minded parents and teachers who are also welcome should they wish to attend. The courses are designed primarily for young people between the ages of 16 and 20. They may also be useful for those who have completed a first year at University but have struggled with e.g. C and Python programming. These courses may also be of interest to those with arts degrees who are interested in possible careers requiring creative computer programming skills.

Arduino boards and programming frameworks are widely used in a variety of school, vocational and university teaching contexts. The workshop courses in this Special Courses thread are for students, teachers, apprentices and those working in the creative arts who wish to explore various aspects of working with Arduino devices at a level that goes beyond the basic introductory recipe following level.

There are 18 course/workshops in all and they are organised as three main course streams. There is a Python oriented stream, an Arduino oriented stream and there is a RaspberryPi oriented stream. Should there be sufficient interest for follow on sessions then it should be possible to organise half day saturday or sunday sessions that will develop some of the themes introduced in these workshops further. The RasberryPi course stream includes modules for those who are interested in learning about high performance computing, neural networks and machine learning, cryptography and bitcoin mining and also for there is a module for those interested in robotics.

One of the aims of these workshops is to provide interesting subjects to introduce/discuss at University or job interviews , and something of note to add to a UCAS personal statement. The Python course stream includes a module that includes topics relevant to those planning to take the Oxford University PAT (Physics Aptitude Test) exam and another module that contains topics relevant to those planning to take the Cambridge University STEP (Sixth Term Examination Paper).

Outside of the school summer holidays when we schedule these courses specially and run them in August the courses can be scheduled on demand, either for teachers, small groups of students or interested adults. Possibilities include running courses over a "long weekend", or during half term or during the Christmas or Easter holidays.

Python Stream Modules :

  1. Getting to Grips with Python (2 - 3 days)
  2. Python and Artificial Intelligence (2 - 3days)
  3. Applied AI with Google AIY Voice and Google AIY Image (2 - 3 days)
  4. Enriched preparation for PAT with Python (2 - 3 days)
  5. Enriched preparation for STEP with Python (2 - 3 days)
  6. Introduction to building and programming RaspberryPi based Robots in Python (2 - 3 days)

Arduino Stream Modules : Arduino boards and programming frameworks are widely used in a variety of school, vocational and university teaching contexts. The workshop courses in this Summer Schools thread are for students, teachers, apprentices and those working in the creative arts who wish to explore various aspects of working with Arduino devices at a level that goes beyond the basic introductory level. There are six courses in this thread

  1. Concrete introduction to Arduino and C Programming (2 - 3 days)
  2. Processing, Firmata and Arduino for interactive visualisation and interfaces (2 - 3 days)
  3. Multitasking with Arduino and FreeRTOS (2 - 3 days)
  4. Interacting with Arduino devices using Python and Firmata (2 - 3 days)
  5. Concrete introduction to C++ programming and the creation of Arduino libraries (2 - 3 days)
  6. Introduction to the construction and programming of Arduino based robotic and mechatronic systems (2 - 3 days)

RaspberryPi Stream Modules :

  1. C programming on the RaspberryPi - part 1 (2 - 3 days)
  2. C programming on the RasbperryPi - part 2 (2 - 3 days)
  3. (2 - 3 days)
  4. OpenCL programming on the RaspberryPi (2 - 3 days)
  5. Introduction to building and programming RaspberryPi based Robots in C (2 - 3 days)
  6. Bitcoin Mining and Cryptography using a RaspberryPi Cluster(2 - 3 days)

The cost for attending each workshop (providing there are 4 to 6 attendees) will be £575.00 inclusive of VAT per attendee. This includes course materials. There will also be a supplemental charge of £120.00 for attending the Applied AI with Google AIY Voice and Google AIY Image course to cover the cost of the AIY Voice and AIY Image kits which students will take home with them after the course.

Courses will run from 9.30 am to 4.00 pm each day, and lunch will be provided.