Behind the Screens: We sit down with Kyle

Kyle joined us as our Outreach Officer for 2022-23 on an industrial placement, in the third year of his Computer Science degree at Newcastle University. He subsequently stayed on with us whilst he completed his studies. As he nears the end of his degree and his time at Altitude, we have asked him to look back on the work he has done for the Foundation.

What motivated you to apply for an industrial placement with Altitude Foundation?

I knew from when I started applying for Universities that I wanted to do an industrial placement as a way to break up my years of study and get some experience in a professional workplace before I finished my degree as a way to boost my skills before graduating. I had spent a lot of my free time in school whilst doing my GCSEs and A levels working with my computer science and maths teachers to help tutor younger students and test out newer content such as the micro:bit that they were planning on using. When I started applying for placements in my second year I found the advertisement for a position at Altitude and after looking into what they did I thought that it sounded like something that I would enjoy doing and that I was well suited for.

What’s been your biggest success over your time working for the charity?

I think that my biggest success with Altitude Foundation has been the module and taster sessions focused around game design and the development of 2d games using arcade.makecode.com. I think that when I have ran the sessions in schools the students have really enjoyed the combination of structured code to get something working and then the freedom to start exploring their own ideas and build on top of what they already have.

What are you hoping to go and do next?

I am currently split between working for a year or two in industry to develop myself further and then return to education to get a PhD in Computer Science or just diving straight into a PhD program. I am interested studying a PhD in either Data Science or Games Engineering, or ideally a combination of the two. My current plan is to keep searching for the right PhD for me, and while I wait also look for a potential game studio that I could work at to improve my skills.