We would like to thank everyone who attended the Through Technological Means conference, and all those who gave presentations and contributed their time and energy towards making it a great day.
But most of all, we’d like to pass our special thanks on to the children of Garndolbenmaen primary school. They came to talk about their experiences using our synthetic voice resources in recent lessons they received on coding with the Raspberry Pi, which were provided by the Unit. They had prepared a video for the conference, but unfortunately there were technical problems when it was played. So now at last (and with apologies for those difficulties), here is the full video that was made by the children of Garndolbenmaen primary school:
The children described to the audience their experience during the lessons, where they were taught core coding skills using the Language Technology Unit’s Welsh medium Turing Test resources. The children also had the opportunity to meet one very special guest – the Vice-chancellor of Bangor University!
The children explained to the Vice-chancellor, professor John Hughes, that they had thoroughly enjoyed working on the project, and that they had learnt a variety of very useful skills. One or two even said that they would like to be professional coders in the future! The children were also able to meet with some of the guest speakers who had travelled from far and wide to attend the conference. Below, from left to right, are John Judge from Ireland, Dwayne Bailey from South Africa (but who is currently working in London) and Kepa Sarasola from the Basque Country .
Here are the children meeting the guest speakers, as well as those members of the Language Technologies Unit who worked on the Language Technologies Portal project, not forgetting Rapiro, the little robot who speaks Welsh:
The children also shared their story with Radio Cymru:
Post Cyntaf : http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b053hsb6 – at 1:16:25.
And the BBC News programme on S4C :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cymrufyw/31833000
And there were many positive comments on Twitter :
Codiwyr ifanc Ysgol Garndolbenmaen wedi datblygu Côd Turing gyda #Python ar #RaspberryPi #techiaith @techiaith pic.twitter.com/4RPIjerLiV — Gareth Morlais (@melynmelyn) March 6, 2015
First language technology meeting I’ve ever been to with a presentation from a primary school. #techiaith — Colin Batchelor (@my_disposition) March 6, 2015
Chwarae teg i plant Ysgol Garndolbenmaen am dôd i gynhadledd @techiaith. Roeddwn i angen gofyn iddyn esbonio cwpl o pethau i fi. #techiaith — Phil Stead (@pjstead) March 6, 2015
Raspberry Pi yn gweithio o’r diwedd, diolch i fyfyrwyr Ysgol Garndolbenmaen am fy ysbrydoli heddiw yn #techiaith pic.twitter.com/A2qAont1pf
— Carl Morris ☺☻ (@carlmorris) March 6, 2015