Last year the Isle of Man section of BCS The Chartered Institute for IT created a new computer programming competition for Isle of Man students, inviting them to create simple apps for the popular Android system used on most smartphones and tablet computers, with a grand prize of ?1,000.
Entrants were required to use the "AppInventor" toolkit developed by Google and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to make app development easier. AppInventor permits people to create Android applications without needing to learn a conventional programming language, allowing them to focus on design and functionality of the application. Many students and schools on the island participated, some suffered from technical challenges and scholastic commitments, some were able to work on their apps from home.
The apps submitted by the students showed great imagination and the BCS Awards committee faced a difficult decision in choosing a single winner, eventually deciding to split the prize between two students.
Harry Mather of St. Ninians High School produced a HomeWork Diary app which allows students to record their homework and extra-curricular activities and substantially replaces the Homework Planner given to all secondary school students on the island. If it were used in our schools it could save the Government the purchase cost of paper planners.
Zachary Elliott of Castle Rushen High School designed a Bird Watching app enabling the user to photograph, store and identify the birds they see, including recording date, time and location of observation, and providing a question tree linked to a bird characteristics database in order to help the user determine what sort of bird they had seen.
The two winners were presented with their award certificates and ?500 cheques at the most recent BCS Isle of Man talk, which was given by Clive Beale, Educational Development Director of the Raspberry Pi foundation. Vice Chair of BCS Membership Board and BCS Isle of Man committee member Steve Burrows made the prize presentations to Harry and Zachary on behalf of BCS Isle of Man, while Clive Beale presented Raspberry Pi computers and accessories to each of them on behalf of the Manx Educational Foundation. BCS Isle of Man expects to announce a new competition for 2013/14 later in the year.
Following the presentation, in front of a large audience filling the Sanderson Suite of the Claremont Hotel, Clive Beale gave a talk explaining the organisation behind the ?30 credit-card sized Raspberry Pi computer which has become the fastest growing computer company of all time, the Raspberry Pi computer's cultural heritage as the successor to the the BBC Micro of the 1980's, and its purpose to provide a widely accessible / low-cost opportunity for students to learn how to actually envision and develop their own software applications – rather than merely learning to “use” ready-made commercial applications which has unfortunately been the extent of “IT / Computing Education” for too many British students in recent years. Mr Beale also showed illustrations of some of the education, research, visual arts and entertainment projects inspired by and utilising the Raspberry Pi, including innovative projects such as measuring the expansion of Marshmallows in reduced air pressure when lofted towards space attached to a helium weather balloon, computer-controlled self-driving model cars, an interactive visual art installation at Canary Wharf, and remote controlled illumination of Jelly Babies via Twitter.
BCS Isle of Man's nex event in June will feature Rhammel Afflick on social media, youth engagement and reactive marketing. Rhammel will also talk at a Positive Action Group event on edemocracy with social media such as epetitions, live voter input to parliamentary debates and the shift to participatory budgeting. Rhammel is the social media policy advisor to the Metropolitan Police Central Command (all 33 boroughs), is working on the digital rebrand of the Commonwealth Secretariat and is a Member of the UK Youth Parliament."
Our July event, sponsored by Continent8, will feature Arbor Networks on Denial of Service technology. Arbor Networks offer world class services to counter the rapidly increasing risks of denial of service attacks, industrial espionage and government sponsored cyberwar.
More details about these events will be announced on our website www.bcs.org.im.
Photo - The winners (Harry Mather on the left, Zachary Elliott on the right) and of Clive Beale from the Raspberry Pi Foundation
