Coders Max Nolan (age 11) from Drumcondra, Ciaran O'Byrne (age 12) from Santry and Ethan Whelan from Lucan (age 10) .
The next generation of whizz-kid coders have been awarded for their creations at this year’s CoderDojo Coolest Project Awards held in Dublin City University (DCU).
The competition for five to 17-year olds covered the budding coders across seven different categories including website design, app design and game design.
Now in its third year, the Coolest Project Awards saw 250 projects being presented last Saturday to an expert judging panel which included Silicon Republic’s own Ann O’Dea, EU Code Week Ambassador Julie Cullen, and James Whelton of CoderDojo who found choosing the winners a difficult feat, the latter of which was quoted as saying: “Just seeing the kids so in their element brought it home the difference that coolest project makes to them, the projects just blew me away it was so hard to judge the winners as there was an incredible amount of great projects who were all raising the bar in terms of creativity’’.
This year’s competition was supported by Liberty Global, parent company of UPC and facilitated CoderDojo to increase the reach of the event to include projects from dojos in the UK, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania who were all in attendance at the event.
Projects were ranked not only for the complexity and usability of the project but also for that essential ‘cool’ factor, similar to the one rule of CoderDojo: “Be cool!” For the highly-talented winners on the day CoderDojo’s partner Intel handed out hi-tech Fonepads, cameras and phones.
Congratulations to all who took part and who came away with some top prizes.
For a full round-up and interviews at the event, tune in tomorrow (10 June) for Claire O’Connell’s report.
Categories and winners
Websites Category
Overall winner: Pulse of the People – interactive data visualisation, Cork Dojo
● Farm Recorder, Ciaran Flanagan, Claremorris CoderDojo
● Marshmallow by Maciej Goszczycki, CoderDojo Science Gallery
● Cool Kids Studio, Lauren Boyle, Bray
App Category
Overall Winner: ReCharge my eCar, Niamh Scanlon, DCU
● Fix my Pothole App, John Ryan, Thurles Dojo
● Classroom Auction App, Ciara Hogan, CoderDojo Girls DCU
● Punchbag IT, Jeremy Rigney, Athlone Dojo
Other Category
Overall Winner: Camera Selfies, Harvey, Science Gallery
● Ardalet, Ciadhla Mulloy, Bray Dojo
● Project 126, Albert Ciborowski, Zambrów Dojo (Poland)
● Galileo Robot, Thomas Carrigan DCU Dojo,
Mix Category (HTML Games, Enterprise, & Advanced Languages)
Overall Winner: Web Based Responsive Design, Adam Barry, Malahide Dojo
● Alexis Ordinary Day, Team Pigasus – Luke Hamilton, Oisín Fitzgerald and Conor Bastible, Sligo Dojo
● CheetahSpoke Store, Ben Herbert,
● Clash of Empires, Adrian and Raul, Timisoara Dojo (Romania)
Scratch Category
Overall Winner: The Showdown Western Game, Gavin Chapman, Ashbourne Dojo
● Anti Bullying Quiz, Kathleen Maughan, Deansrath Dojo
● Dyslexic games, Curran Brothers, Wimslow Dojo (UK)
● Percy Jackson Quiz, Ronan Cassidy, Athlone Dojo
Overall International Project
Useless Box, a mechanically programmed box, Ugo Baroncini, Bologna Dojo (Italy)
