Technology in our Walls?

Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and co-founder of internet startup Broadcast.com, once said, “The world’s first trillionaires are going to come from somebody who masters AI and all its derivatives and applies it in ways we never thought of.” Welcome to the world of coding at Brentwood. We in the Coding 10 elective have been relentlessly working on different parts and different types of coding since September. Starting with C-based language and now moving on to Python, from robots to computers, it has all been leading to this, an interactive art project, taught by the Head of our Math Department. Mr. Wardrop has been thinking about this project since the beginning of the year. Since September Mr. Wardrop has been giving our group of Grade 10 and 11 students all the tools necessary to succeed and create a solid year-end project.  According to Mr. Wardrop this project “was to establish an authentic need for coding and learn to code through this need.” As the year went on he kept adding ideas to his starting thoughts including “collaborating with a spinoff” so, together with Mr. Luna’s E block art class, we set out to do the first ever Interactive Art  Project at Brentwood. The class has been working hard, bouncing ideas from each other and overcoming challenges together so that we can admire our work out in the hallways.  The projects vary: from paintings lighting up with different color LEDs to musical houses, to crystal heads spinning on a turntable, this project is going to have it all. When asked about the project, Mr. Wardrop said, “The cool thing about this is I hve not done it myself so I along the students.” When asked about the future of this project he stated, “The first time you do things you always learn from it, and it is taking longer than I thought but next time I will do some things differently.” The project, however, is far from being done despite Mr Wardrop’s hopes to be finished before the Brentwood Regatta - some unexpected issues arose and those, along with absences because of sport, made it challenging for this to happen. Keep your eyes open for these projects in the next couple of weeks. Juan N, Whittall ‘20.