Drawing on her Architecture degree experience at MIT, Alexandra Coston brought design expertise in visual communications and design techniques to her Junior and Senior School lessons, underpinned by her design formula, “using your hands, using your heart and using your brain.”
Alexandra shared: “The atmosphere in Aberdeen has been amazing. The Robert Gordon’s Junior School pupils are curious and so energetic. They dive right into lessons and are excited to learn what they can do and how to bring their imaginations to life.”
Hear more from Alexandra as she reflects on her time at RGC, below.
Sadhana Lolla, a fourth year student at MIT studying Computer Science and Maths used her expertise to bring artificial intelligence, computing and robotics lessons to pupils in Primary 6 to S3 . She also shared her insights to the whole of the RGC community on the future of artificial intelligence and its impact on our everyday lives.
Reflecting on her time at RGC, Sadhana said: “The pupils are very excited to learn more about what’s out there. They love watching videos of robots that are currently there, analysing them to figure out why we build robots the way that we do, how we think about computing and how they can think and get more involved - it’s really exciting!”
Hear more from Sadhana as she looks back on her experience and time spent at RGC, below.
Aqil Pasha, an MBA student at MIT, brought his experience in the world of entrepreneurship to the College and the whole of the RGC community via his talk on Harnessing AI to apply an entrepreneurial mindset in your life and career. During his time at RGC, Aqil led Primary 7 pupils through a series of lessons exploring starting their own companies and elevator pitch techniques. He challenged senior pupils to think about how to ask good questions to uncover non-obvious problems and how use their creativity and artificial intelligence generates ideas and solves them.
Aqil left two pieces of advice for RGC pupils: “Do not fear failure and think about your ideas and career as a massive experiment. Be bold in trying things out - you will quickly learn what you don’t like and you’ll quickly learn what you do like, and then you can start filling your life with the things you do like. Do not shy away from reaching out to people who are in the pathways that you are interested in. RGC has such a strong alumni network and you can learn from them what it's like to walk in their shoes. There’s so much you can learn from someone during a 20 minute conversation. Talk to people to learn!”
Hear more from Aqil and his reflections on his time at the College, below.
Robin Macpherson, Head of College shared: “Our partnership with MIT is one of the most exciting aspects of our super curriculum at RGC, and the value for pupils and staff is significant. Curiosity and innovation are core values at RGC and the MIT partnership really helps us to put these into practice. It was brilliant to have Alexandra, Sadhana and Aqil with us, and the insights gained from their work have allowed us to develop a much clearer vision for how we embrace AI going forward. It was a genuinely inspirational experience for us all.
"The partnership also enables staff to learn about new trends in technology and techniques in the style of learning that goes on at MIT and we value the lasting impression and knowledge that is exchanged between the MIT students with our pupils and staff."