Behind the Scenes of FutureHacks 2021 | feat. the President of AiGoLearning
AiGoLearning has pulled its second successful hackathon ever — FutureHacks2021! FutureHacks was a free online coding competition where individuals and teams of up to 4 people aged 7 to 15 created and presented projects to a panel of judges, for a chance to win cool prizes such as Nintendo Switches and wireless headphones.
On top of this, FutureHacks provided the opportunity to explore the world of STEM with Spring Talks and Mini lessons from accomplished programmers working at fortune 500 companies and ivy league students in computer science. The competition saw more than 300 students register and over 160 elementary and middle schoolers compete and a variety of submissions ranging from 3D Operating Systems to Extraplanetary colony simulators.
That being said, one of the most impressive aspects of the competition is quite possibly what was largely unseen — the group of middle and high schoolers at AiGoLearning that made the entire event happen. All aspects of the hackathon, from its organization to execution to judging, were completely handled by a group of high school students who wanted to provide an opportunity for young students to explore the amazing world of STEM. Inspired by both the success of their planning and motivation, I reached out and had a brief interview with Daniel Liu, President of AiGoLearning and senior in West Windsor Plainsboro High School North:
What inspired you to organize FutureHacks, and why did you want to specifically target 7–15 year olds?
“The idea behind FutureHacks and events such as these is to get more students involved in programming, especially those at a younger age since there really aren’t that many suitable programming events for them. [AiGoLearning also has an initiative called STEM for All — an initiative in which interested teachers are recruited and help provide free programming classes to underrepresented and unprivileged children interested in computer science.] It also is a way for our students to assess their abilities and what they have learned in the past year.”
FutureHacks is one of only a handful of hackathons that is completely student organized and executed, especially with such a large level of turnout. In your opinion, what was the key factor that allowed AiGoLearning to successfully pull this event?
“I really appreciate the help of all of our student teachers who taught the mini lessons, moderators, and especially the judges who come from many different professional fields. The AiGoLearning event team was definitely essential in the success of this event.”
While the hackathon competition was obviously the prime directive of FutureHacks, it’s clear that AiGoLearning was determined to provide participants the opportunity to pursue their interest in STEM with your Spring talks and mini lessons. Why did you personally want to set up these events within FutureHacks?
“The Spring Talks and mini lessons were I think what made this event unique. The main reason behind the mini lessons is that we have a lot of students who are on the younger side. So, even if they did not feel comfortable making a project […], I wanted them to still be able to get something out of this event, hence the mini lessons. The Spring Talks were, in my opinion, really special, since we have all this knowledge and opportunities we can share with high school students and parents who may want to learn about them — such as the third Spring Talk with Dr. Wei Xie (the Principal of Northeast Academy of Philadelphia), the college round table, and really all of them to be fair. I think it’s also really cool that we get to talk about what we have done in the past year.”
For anyone interested in becoming a part of AiGoLearning or take part in any of its initiatives, you can find them at https://aigolearning.org. Similarly, if you’re interested in taking a look at FutureHacks2021 and some of the amazing submissions, feel free to take a look at futurehacks.net or our Devpost at futurehacks-2021.devpost.com.
