In an effort to encourage high school students to consider a career in ICT, National ICT Australia (NICTA) ran its inaugural Creative Embedded Challenge competition.
The competition encouraged students to write a program of their own choice, using the Arduino programming language, and was open to students who participated in this year’s National Computer Science School’s embedded programming challenge.
Fifty “NICTA ed1” embedded computer boards were sent to students who had access to compatible hardware.
NICTA senior research engineer, Dr John Judge, said the students were encouraged to be as imaginative as possible, and that all seven entries “put in put in an enormous amount of effort”.
Judge said the competition was aimed to show high school students the possibilities of ICT as a future career path.
“Talented [high school] students who have an interest in programming, we’re trying to reinforce and maintain that interest to get them into ICT degrees,” he said.
“This is also important because when high school students today look at what job opportunities are available in the ICT industry, they don’t really have a good scope for the possibilities.”
The winning entrant was Zoi Petroulias from Melbourne’s Camberwell Grammar School.
NICTA plans to continue the competition next year.
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