The Georgetown Inter-national Academy’s Team Green has won the second National Scratch Coding Competition.
More than 80 teams from eight regions participated in the challenge, which required students in the first to tenth grades to create a scratch animation project reflecting their research about the effects of climate change on their community or country.
Second place was shared by two teams from Queen’s College – Gotta Scratch that Itch and The Last Minute Gang as well as Aurora’s Team Sunflower. Lima Sands’ School Coders and LimaSands_Team Inspiration claimed third place, with Central Mahaicony’s 4TGirls in fourth. Bartica Mayor’s Office’s Team Creative Hands and Kaneville’s Ebank GoldenAchievers tied for fifth place. The Lake Mainstay club received special honours, winning the coveted Director’s Trophy for excellence, outstanding citizenship, having four or more teams entered into the competition and outstanding research.
All students will receive certificates, while the top three overall teams and coaches will also receive cash prizes. In addition, the top teams from each region will also receive certificates and medals. The top regional teams were from Region One, Port Kaituma; Region Two Aurora’s Team Sunflower; Region Three Belle West_Coding Club; Region Four Georgetown International School; Region Five Central Mahaicony’s 4TGirls; Region Six West Canje Club; Region Seven Bartica Mayor’s Office’s Creative Hands, and Region Nine Tabatinga’s Team Red. More than 50 teams from STEMGuyana’s learning pods programme participated in the competition, demonstrating the significant role that after school programmes play in developing students’ skills and interests in STEM.
The competition was sponsored by support from the IDB, Tullow Oil, GTT, and select members of the Guyana Diaspora. The Ministry of Education was also credited for allowing after school programmes to exist and flourish in several school facilities.
“We are thrilled with the level of creativity and dedication shown by all the participating students,” said STEMGuyana Opera-tions Manager Alisha Koulen, spokesperson for the competition. “They worked tirelessly to research the topic, develop animation concepts, and bring their ideas to life using coding logic and engineering design principles.”
The scratch coding competition provides an opportunity for students to strengthen their soft skills like collaboration, communication, conflict resolution, innovative thinking and leadership. Students also get to hone their skills in coding and design, while also raising awareness about important issues such as climate change. The competition also helps to foster a love of STEM subjects and encourages students to pursue careers in these fields.
When asked what was the greatest challenge in hosting such a large and innovative national event, STEMGuyana Director Karen Abrams said: “The ability to scale and manage such a large number of teams… However, the automated platform which we created will allow us to scale the event to hundreds, even thousands of teams. The entries were graded through the platform by college students in the US, but our organisation is currently working on an artificial intelligence component which will allow for complete automation of the scoring of thousands, even millions of entries which will be useful as we expand the competition throughout the Caribbean and Latin America.”
According to Abrams, the competition will help identify areas for improvement, but overall, the event’s operations were relatively smooth once the participants got used to the software. The sponsors and organisers of the competition congratulated all the winners and participants and expressed their excitement for the next coding event which is scheduled for July.
