More than 20 pupils from three Hammersmith & Fulham secondary schools joined a video conference on codes and the Enigma machine, when they learned how codes have been used and broken throughout history.

The joint maths and history lesson, involving students from the three borough schools and five other schools in the UK, was led by Dr Claire Greer, who showed the young people one of the famous Enigma code machines over the video link.

Dr Greer, of the Enigma Schools Project, led the video conference from Cambridge University, with the students watching from four video conferencing centres around the UK, including the Kingwood City Learning Centre (CLC), in Fulham.

She opened up the Enigma machine to show the students how it worked. The device was used by the German military during the Second World War and its complex code system was famously decrypted by British codebreakers at Bletchley Park, helping to shorten the war.

Dr Greer's talk covered codes throughout history, including those used by Roman Emperor Julius Caesar to communicate with his generals, and the coded messages used by Mary, Queen of Scots, to keep in contact with her supporters, who were plotting to overthrow Elizabeth I.

The 26 Hammersmith & Fulham students, who were set decoding exercises before, during and after the video conference, took part by using state-of-the-art facilities at the Kingwood City Learning Centre (CLC), which opened two years ago in Kingwood Road, Fulham.

The event, the first of two interactive sessions on codes, was part of a programme of activities for 'gifted and talented' pupils in the borough, run as part of the government's Excellence in Cities initiative, which also paid for the CLC to be built. The video conferences were run by the Motivate Project - part of the Millennium Mathematics Project, based at Cambridge University.
The participating borough schools were Hurlingham & Chelsea School and Lady Margaret School, both in Fulham, and the Bridge Academy, in Hammersmith.

Before the conference the students, aged 11 to 13, were given an exercise to crack a code set for them on strips of paper, which they had to wrap around a pencil to decipher. They discussed the results at the opening of the session. The exercise was based on a system called the scytale, used by the ancient Greeks.

During Dr Greer's talk, the students were set further decoding exercises over the video link. At the end of the session on Thursday (6 May), which lasted just over an hour, they were given a project to complete and will present their findings at the second video conference with Dr Greer on 14 June.

Jenny Gage, co-ordinator of the Motivate Project, said: "Claire prepared the paper strips and sent them out to the schools so the students could work on something in advance. Claire asked the students if they had deciphered it, which they had, and how they had done it. She then spoke about the history of coding from ancient Greece to the Enigma machine and set the students decoding exercises on the video screen during her talk.
The Motivate Project gives students exciting opportunities like this to use their maths and present their work to an audience."

Deputy for education, Cllr David Williams, said: "The state-of-the-art facilities at the Kingwood CLC have enabled us to provide extra creative and academic opportunities for students such as this video conference, which was run as part of our programme for 'gifted and talented' pupils. This marvellously creative and inspiring learning experience would not have been possible without the CLC's superb facilities, funded by the government's Excellence in Cities programme."

Motivate Project Web site
Enigma Schools Project Web site