Last Thursday year 9 students had the opportunity to visit Bletchley Park, the home of the codebreakers. This was the site that Alan Turing, Gordon Welchman and Bill Tutte along with over 8,000 other people during the Second World War worked tirelessly to decrypt German, Japanese and Italian communication. Their work was vital for the Allies to understand the positions and movements of enemy troops all throughout the war.
Students got a guided tour of the facility which included the main manor building where operations started. They also got to visit the garages that contained motorbikes of Dispatch Riders as well as cars of the Special Liaison Units that contained hidden radios for high ranking officers connecting them straight to Bletchley Park. Students also got to explore the extra communication huts built throughout the war which had various displays, exhibits and projections explaining more of Bletchley Parks role in the war. As well as seeing the Polish memorial honouring Polish mathematicians on their early work breaking Engima.
Finally, was a session put together by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) on the 6 most important things for keeping safe online. Students looked at creating strong, memorable passwords, the importance of privacy on social media websites, keeping data secure using password managers and how biometrics can help secure our information using a variety of interactive tasks.
