Alex Doyle - Work Experience Blog
Hear about what Alex got up to during his 2 weeks within the team!
12 March 2018
During the course of my two week placement at the City of York Council, working with digital team, I have had a wonderful experience to learn how Jae and Lindsay work together to make York companies more active digitally which enables them to grow and expand. Also, I have been able to observe how the organisation of these projects works and how they achieve their target.
Throughout the two weeks I have been able to some admin work on spreadsheets, observe a CodeYork class, help with the renovation of the Digital City York website and many other activities which have helped me learn all about the work about the Digital York team do.
One project that the Digital City York team do is a coding club which is volunteer led which its goal is to help children understand and learn coding. This project has expanded from the start of 2017 and runs classes with a range of young children in years five and six up to college year two. Expectantly, it should continue to develop and tutor pupils from schools across York of the same age. Moreover, the team are increasing the number of children interested in coding which can only be interpreted in a positive way.
My favourite part of my fortnight here was being able to help update the website and help add to the website. At first I was assigned the task of updating the news articles which I was able to do efficiently and it helped me understand how websites are created and what the building blocks are for a good website. In addition, I was then helping with updating contact details which I was able to complete with minimal complexity. This gave me an insight on how web design works and how influential it can be in the modern day.
Additionally, I was able to attend one of the CodeYork classes that are hosted at Dringhouses Primary School which were after school. During these sessions I was able to watch Jae and the CodeYork volunteer help the pupils engage in the sessions and support their programming skills whilst enjoying it at the same time.
It has been an amazing and valuable experience and will serve me well later in life and I thoroughly enjoyed my experience at this placement and I hope the best for the future for the Digital City York team as these two weeks have given me the opportunity to showcase and develop my ICT skills. I would recommend a work placement in the Digital City York team as it is enjoyable and productive and the workforce throughout the whole ICT department are friendly and highly skilled which means they can assist your development in many ways.
