15 October 2020
Mr Tom Rattle, Head of Computer Science
On Wednesday 14 October, Upper Sixth Former Grace gave a presentation at the weekly meeting of our Technology Society on Steganography, Magic and the Art of Deception. Coming straight from the House cross country run, Grace spoke about the history of steganography, an area of computer science which deals with hidden messages stored within images, to a group of her year group peers. The talk was also broadcast live for students in other year groups and staff.
Grace introduced the topic by telling us about its history, such as the story of a ruler who tattooed secret messages onto slaves’ heads and sent them to deliver the messages once their hair had grown back! She also looked at how steganography has been used recently and what the potential implications might be for social media or counter-terrorism, telling us stories about messages embedded in videos. It was a fascinating talk and Grace managed to explain a difficult cryptography method in terms which were accessible to all listening, which is no mean feat. Sophia in Year 7 commented, “This is so informative and will definitely help me in the future”.
In the summer term, Arkwright engineering scholar Grace took part in the 10-day CyberStart Advanced course - a cyber security programme run by The Smallpeice Trust and National Cyber Security Centre for Lower Sixth Formers interested in cyber security. Grace and fellow Arkwright scholar Milan were two of just 30 students selected for this pilot programme.