Simula hosts introduction to scientific programming for high school students

The Simula School of Research and Innovation (SSRI) offers programming courses for secondary students in the local area, through our youth outreach programme. Last week, SSRI hosted a course in scientific programming for students that attend the first year of high school.

The students, which were from the first year of Sandvika high school, attended a programming course at Simula divided into two half-days. The course was directed at students in the natural sciences.

Through SSRI's youth outreach activities we currently offer three different programming courses, all of which provide an introduction to how programming can be used to solve tasks that are relevant to the natural sciences. In last week's course, the students were guided through the basic concepts in programming (variables, loops, lists, functions, etc), where the final goal is for the students to use what they have learnt to simulate different types of population dynamics. Programming is a useful and flexible tool that many will be able to use at a later stage, especially those that are considering a career in the natural sciences. Learning how to program is a valuable skill, with great importance for society, and the concepts we teach in our courses will make the students well equipped to continue with any kind of programming in their further education.