India’s Biggest School Hackathon kicks off
Hyderabad: India’s Biggest School Hackathon kicked off at Telangana Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society (TSWREIS) run schools in 20 different locations across Telangana on Saturday morning
It was a 12 hour long Hackathon, held from 9am to 9am. Each location had 200 students of 7th standard to 9th standard. They were divided into 40 groups, each group comprising of 5 students.
The beauty of the Hackathon was it was organised without using computers.
These each group was given a problem to solve or some groups came out with their own problems to find out solutions.
Some of the problems include: Conserve Electricity, Water, reduce food wastage, waste management, ensuring hygiene toilets etc & others.
Some of the solutions built during the Hackathon include “Automatic Water Tap, that turns on and off on the basis of sensors, saving wastage of water; the other one is Automatic Bathroom/Toilets Cleaning System that works on its own without human intervention to keep toilets hygiene”
Upon given the problems, the participants tried to understand the problem. They used various steps such as Understand, Define, Idea Generation, Choose best Idea, Plan, Build Solution and Test the solution developed they were taught.
The Hackathon held at Sheikpet was conducted by Trainers Rohit, Afazal, Anjaneyulu and Gopinath.
The Hackathon was organied as part of the Mission Code Project of TSWREIS. With projects like this one, government schools kids will also join the ever increasing students’ coders family.
TSWREIS which was started with a vision to build an outstanding government educational institution
floated a tender for its ambitious initiative/project “Mission Code”. After due diligence and technical and commercial evaluation, Sunitha Infovision Ltd was entrusted with the responsibility. Sunitha Infovision roped in Secure Space and CST as implementation partners.
The project commenced in February. The task was code named as Project “Mission Code”. The objective of the project was to teach Coding as the fourth language along with Telugu, Hindi, and English to Social Welfare Students. This was a novel project aimed at producing the next generation of coders for the country.
The twenty locations where the competition held include: Nallakanche, Kammadanam, Gowlidoddi, Shaipet in Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy Districts; Addgudur, GV Gudem, in Nalgonda District; Mulugu, Chitkuku in Medak; Ramireddygudem, Veldanda in Mahboobnagar; Pedda Kodapugal, Armoor in Nizamabad; Nandimedaram, Rakmapur Sainik School in Karimnagar; Left Pochampad, Bellampally in Adilabad; Dammapet and Kallur in Khamm and Elkaturthy and Madikonda in Warangal Districts.
It was organized by Sunitha Infovision Ltd, a Hyderabad based 17 years old company in EdTech Space. It was organized in association with Secure Space, a city-based Startups engaged in Tech Content Development and Management and CST (Centinel Spark Technologies), a company involved in School Technology Training and Implementation. All these organisations have taught 4000 students coding for hundred hours in the past one and half month. This Hackathon is a concluding and grand finale of Mission Code Project of TSWREIS.
Says Dr. R S Praveen Kumar. Secretary, TSWREIS “ “In Telangana Welfare Residential Schools, we introduced coding as a fourth language. We strongly believe that this skill will catapult the most marginalised kids into the core of knowledge economy. This is going to be a game changer in our war against poverty.
By learning coding early in school life we will be ahead of our peers. If computers rule us, we would like to rule computers said Srikanth a 9th class student and participant at Sheikhpet school.
15 years old Rajesh from KPHB colony and one of the participants at Sheikhpet said we learnt unplugged activities, problem solving techniques, Algorithms, Flow Chart, Deadlock, Sorting, Searching techniques. We have also learnt Minimum Spanning Tree( a technique helps in planning)and Python Language. Python is an interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language, he informed.
Shivram another participant is is happy that he is able to learn technology at school to be future ready. I am happy I got an opportunity and I am fully utilising it. He wants to be a software engineer when grows up and wants to develop Apps useful to society.
A hackathon is a Codefest. It is a social coding event that brings computer programmers and other interested people together to improve upon or build a new software program or find out a solution to a problem using technology.
Hackathons in schools especially in government schools are very rare that kids from marginalized communities are involved. Given the sheer size and novelty, it may not be an exaggeration if it also earns its a rightful place in Limca Book of Records.