Summer Tech Make-A-Thon
Over the last weekend in July, Prewired hosted our annual Summer Make-A-Thon sponsored by Kin + Carta.
This was a 2-day event where 20 young tech enthusiasts (aged between 11–16) joined teams and came up with real-world problems that were important to them. Using various technologies, they built possible solutions to their problems. At the end of the weekend, they presented these solutions to a panel of judges, parents and other attendees. And as I’m sure you’ll agree, the problems and solutions our young coders came up with were very impressive!
Before we talk about the teams’ projects, let’s look at the structure of the weekend. First up, teams were tasked with agreeing on three team values that were most important to them and best represented their team, as well as a team name. Following this, they were asked to fill out a mind map with some potential problems (these could be societal, personal or anything in between). Some of the problems identified are shown below:
The teams then chose a problem to focus on and began brainstorming a solution. Together with our mentors they chose a technology they wanted to use — these included Scratch, AppLab, Micro:bits and Python. Once they’d had some time to discuss, each team came up with an elevator pitch.
Here’s an overview of each team and their elevator pitches:
Team “Uno”: Create a project aimed at people who own fish but forget to feed them. They hoped to help people remember to feed their fish by providing them with a game to make feeding fish more interesting. The idea was that you could get ‘coins’ when correctly feeding your fish and use these to level up. The hope was that by creating a virtual game, you would be reminded to feed your fish.
Team “J.E.E.P”: They had heard energy bills recently went up. They worried that some people may forget to turn lights off or have difficulties turning lights off. Their idea was to create a motion detecting sensor to turn off lights using micro:bits.
Team “The IP and Cookie Loggers”: Create a project to help make people’s passwords more secure. They wanted to provide people with strong passwords and give them feedback and advice on what strong passwords should include.
Team “Make-A-Phonys”: They identified that individuals are worried about the crime rate where they are travelling to or in their local area. Their idea was to help people become more aware of crime statistics by providing an interactive map with information for each county in the UK.
Team “AAAH”: They identified that in society there is a large scale smoking and drinking problem. Their idea was to create an app to look at how we can curb this problem, by providing individuals with information and encouraging them to eat more healthily and to exercise.
Teams then spent the rest of their time planning features and making designs on paper before implementing their solutions and building their prototypes. Mentors were on hand to help and provide support throughout the process.
At the end of a busy two days, we welcomed our 3 guest judges; Karen Jewell (Lead Consultant at Kin + Carta), Sam Dods (Head of Mobile Engineering at Kin + Carta) and Amy Guy (Former Prewired Mentor & Director at Open Data Services Co-operative).
Our 5 teams presented their projects and were judged on:
- The idea,
- Design & usability,
- Teamwork & project management
- Presentation skills
After tough deliberation from the judges, the following awards were given:
- Prize for best Teamwork: Make-a-Phony’s
- Prize for best Design: Uno
- Prize for best Motivation: AAAH
- Prize for best Solution: Make-a-Phony’s
- Prize for best Presentation: The IP & Cookie Loggers
- Prize for best Innovation: AAAH
…and the overall winners taking home the grand prize were team J.E.E.P, scoring highly across all areas.
This was a very successful weekend, made possible by sponsorship from Kin + Carta and the fantastic dedication and enthusiasm from our team of volunteers. Events like these are hugely important in bringing tech skills to young people, as well as soft skills such as teamwork and presenting to an audience. It was great to see the participants having fun and working together, and we can’t wait until next year’s Make-a-Thon to do it all again!
