Two Dublin students were the proud winners of the first Google Call to Code online competition that challenged students via a variety of puzzles across logic and programming tasks designed for junior level and senior level cycles.
The overall winner of the Call to Code junior cycle group was Adam Power, aged 15, from St. Aidan’s CBS, Dublin 9 and the winner of the senior cycle group was Aron Hoffman, 17, from Luttrellstown Community College, Dublin 15 who both received a MaKey MaKey invention kit and a brand new Chromebook Pixel.
Both Adam and Aron had proven to be the best in their field achieving the highest scores in the online competition and was decided by the most problems correctly answered.
The MaKey MaKey is one of the most envied pieces of kit for young inventors and developers as it lets users turn everyday objects into touchpads and combine them with the internet.
Competition was fierce as both Adam and Aron were whittled down from the original group of 2,500 students registered to represent their school with 50pc of participation coming from outside the capital showing a growing interest among students in computer science.
Two teachers were also commended for having the most students registered in each contest group and encouraging students to learn how to code with junior cycle winner, Anne Gilleran, from Scoil Mhuire in Strokestown, Co Roscommon and senior cycle winner Jackie Cooper of Árdscoil na Tríonóide in Athy, Co Kildare each receiving a Chromebook pixel as well as a Chromebook computer lab for their school.
Speaking of the winners’ achievements, head of Google’s Education committee Fionnuala Meehan said: “This competition is about generating interest and excitement in coding among students and teachers. It is important that we do everything we can to foster the next generation of digital entrepreneurs and Call to Code is designed to help students have a deeper understanding of computer science.”
