Waj Mohammed a student at New Bridge Multi Academy Trust was one of a number of students who participated in a visit to Chicago earlier this year to work with American students and Apple to design apps. The work is part of an ongoing project funded via the Turing scheme. Read Waj’s blog and watch the film produced by the group.
I found my business trip to Chicago to be quite a magical and fulfilling experience as for someone who had never previously been to America I was absolutely blown away by how beautiful and gargantuan the state (and our hotel) really was, well especially when compared to little old Oldham town centre back at home. As you may have heard we travelled to many places around the great city of Chicago such as: Chinatown, Little Italy, downtown Chicago and so much more that I unfortunately do not have the time to list. Some of the highlights of my trip I would say would be of course the dinner cruise on Chicago River as not only did we get a beautiful view of the whole of downtown Chicago but we also had a bit of a shake and a wiggle on the dance floor which was located just in the middle of our boat. And of course, I cannot forget the primary reason why we came which was to work with the other students at Chicago, Illinois Norridge high school to create an app idea and present it at apple headquarters to the high-ranking members of apple. I and most of us found working with our new colleagues at Chicago an absolutely fantastic experience as most of us had never even seen Americans outside of movies and tv shows, so of course there was so much to learn about one another like for example many of us asked questions like , “what is school like in Chicago” and they would mostly reply with some questions of their own like, “What is the main sport that most people support and play back in the UK “. After introducing ourselves and working together on our app ideas and prototypes the day had finally arrived when we had to present our final idea and app prototype to apple. I remember how nervous everyone was feeling at the time. However, we all managed to not only get through it but smash it as well as we were handed awards for qualities that we achieved such as, “best presentation” or “Best documentary”. In conclusion I would like to thank all the staff wo made this dream come to life and I would like to thank our wonderful tour guide Gilbert who I imagine we all dearly miss after the laughs we had with him. I would rate my trip to Chicago and 11/10 as I found it to be so much more than I signed up for.
Now watch the video:
