SINGAPORE, 26 April – As many as 150 students created 45 apps at the recently held two-day GIIS Hackathon event at Queenstown campus to learn coding and create unique projects.

Organised by IB Year 1 students, the event had students from Grad 9 and above create an application for either game design or a mobile application.  Students below Grade 8 had to create a simple animation and game using the “Scratch” software.  The final development was judged two experienced analysts, based on factors such as originality, technical complexity, design and practicality.

Enthusiastic students teamed up to put their coding knowledge to use by creating user-centric apps from themes such as ecommerce, travel, personal development and health. “I’ve been wanting to code for a really long time and I thought this is a really great platform to create apps, which is why I participated”, shared a hackathon participant, when asked what interested her to participate in the event.

Prior to the event, student organisers took the initiative to train beginner students. Junior category participants were trained using Scratch while Senior category students were trained on app design and game design respectively using the Thunkable and Unity development programmes.

Organising committee member Mr Emmanuel D’Souza said he organised the event as part of his training as a leader as well as his determination to give back to younger students the knowledge he had learnt himself. “I wanted to spread the same sense of belief, the school has shown in my abilities.”  

Hackathon served as an excellent platform to inspire students to unleash their inventive spark, which is further developed by the inclusion of GIIS’s 9GEMS pedagogy in their curriculum which helps them become critical thinkers and confident team players.