SAE Liverpool hosts exclusive Web workshop with Ballakermeen High School students

Students from Ballakermeen High School, on the Isle of Man, recently took part in an engaging virtual masterclass with @SAEinstituteUK Web Development and Game Art Animation Programme Coordinator, Firdaus Khalid. 

As one of SAE’s valued partner institutions, SAE was keen to provide a bespoke Web Development workshop to eleven students and their teacher, the school’s Head of Media Studies, Sophie Riley.

Sophie Riley, said: “Graham and his team at SAE Liverpool are fantastic. Friendly, helpful, professional: they are certainly a pleasure to work with and we value them as one of our best external partners. We had the opportunity to work closely with SAE, allowing our Media students at Ballakermeen to gain knowledge and skills in a Web Development workshop. Firdaus led a workshop that was not only educational but fun and enjoyable! The students were highly engaged. They listened to his expertise and relished getting to grips with the stepped tasks. We all look forward to a second workshop on Film.” 

The students really enjoyed the workshop, in which Firdaus covered the basics of the different languages that are used in building websites and apps, he then went onto look at the actual putting together of an app and the backend processes behind that.

Firdaus said: “We were very delighted to have students from Ballakermeen High School students attending my Web Development workshop recently! The students and staff were amazing and highly engaging throughout the workshop.  We started off with light exercises on HTML and CSS, before jumping into high gear with a bit on Javascript. The students were really loving it as we used the CodeCombat website as part of our workshop. It was really great to see them enjoying the lesson & interacting with the codes, as this is a small taste of how we here at SAE Institute do things!” 

Firdaus showed the students some examples of the most basic apps and how much revenue they can generate, which surprised them all. 

There was also an opportunity for a Q&A which gave the students a greater insight into what we do at SAE, and what career opportunities are available to our graduates. 

One student, Alicia, said: “It was really interesting and well presented. I was constantly hooked in by what he (Firdaus) was saying.”

Another student called Paulina said: “I thought it was great. I liked that Firdaus made use of an existing website on the internet because we now have the ability to learn more and access the site in our own time. I really liked how enthusiastic he was all the way through and just seeing him encouraging our interaction during the meeting was very motivational. To my surprise, I found myself enjoying Firdaus’ recurring use of a whimsical theme and I think its use was very fitting alongside the website which we visited. I am also pleased that there was no pressure put on us to turn our cameras and microphones on.” 

The students were also invited to the recent SAE Extra masterclass with VFX artist, Hussin Khan. 

These custom workshops are just some of the ways in which SAE helps to support its partner institutions, with other partnership benefits including scholarship opportunities, and under normal circumstances, personal tours and access to our state-of-the-art facilities.