Downpatrick student Michael completes IT summer camp

Downpatrick student Michael completes IT summer camp

14 August 2019

A DOWNPATRICK teenager has successfully completed one of Northern Ireland’s leading IT infrastructure summer camps. 

Michael Convery, a pupil at St Patrick’s Grammar School, participated in the 2019 Novosco Camp, run in partnership with Ulster University, earlier this month. 

The five-day initiative at Ulster University’s Jordanstown campus, which was free of charge to students aged 16-17, provided first-hand, practical experience in the management and development of IT infrastructure and systems in a fun and engaging learning environment. 

Professional IT engineers from Novosco, experts from the Connected Health Innovation Centre at Ulster University and lecturers from the University’s School of Computing facilitated the camp, which also included a tour of Novosco’s state-of-the-art Belfast headquarters at Catalyst Inc. 

Combining theory with hands-on experience, the camp covered networks, programming, building circuits, sensors, machine learning and more. 

Each student was provided with a Raspberry Pi, a small and affordable computer used for learning programming.

Novosco is an IT infrastructure and managed services provider with clients in the public, private and voluntary sectors across the UK and Ireland. 

Patrick McAliskey, Novosco managing director, said: “It’s an understatement to say that Northern Ireland’s IT sector is fast growing and provides a vast number of opportunities for talented people.

“Novosco Camp helps us communicate that to potential future talent, as well as to help them develop their experience and skills so that they can potentially go on to have a fantastic career in IT.

Dr Nicola Ayre, Associate Head of the School of Computing at Ulster University, commented: “Ulster University nurtures world-class IT and computing talent every year, students we are proud to say are industry ready and sought after by global companies, industry disruptors and local technology firms.”