Year 13 Boys have an ‘App’etite for Success
Friends’ School Lisburn entered two year 13 teams into the now annual SENTINUS IT R & D App design competition, a test of teamwork, commercial awareness and of course app design and development skills.
The competition also provides an opportunity for team members to attain the CREST award. CREST is a project-based awards scheme for the STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) run by the British Science Association, which links the personal passions of students to curriculum-based learning.
The competition started back in September with all the competitors attending a two-day workshop, teaching students how to design both websites and mobile apps. Students were also briefed on the structure of the competition and of course how to meet the requirements of the CREST award.
Each team was assigned a mentor, an industry-based professional with specialist knowledge relating to the project they were undertaking and with whom they could correspond with for support and guidance. Both Friends’ teams were assigned a mentor from BT, who met with both teams to discuss their projects as well giving them a wider perspective and insight into the IT sector in which BT operate.
In addition to developing an app and website, teams were also expected to compile a report, effectively a business proposal, outlining each stage of their journey from the initial idea right through to how the app would be marketed and ultimately provide a financial return on the investment.
Both teams attended a ‘Celebration’ day at the Braid Centre in Ballymena. Over the course of the day, each team had to attend a ‘Q & A’ session with industry assessors and later give a presentation on their project to a team of assessors from SENTINUS. Both teams from Friends’ were commended on the high level of technical expertise evident in both their website and app design.
Team “Educate”, consisting of Ross Irwin, John Dawson and Reuben Cotton, were victorious on the day, wining two out of the possible three awards (‘Best App’ and ‘Best Overall Project’), only narrowly missing out on ‘Best Website’. The team were commended not only for the high level of technical capability for also for a high level of business awareness which, as one of the assessors put it, “could have been commercially developed”.
The boys were also invited along to compete at the “Young Innovators” finals held up in University of Ulster at Jordanstown, where they would compete with winners in the other categories for even greater prizes.
Team “2CANTV” consisting of Ben Irwin, Stephen Gibson, Ryan Shanks, Alex Taylor and Cameron O’Hare, were also commended on their project and in particular the level of technical expertise evident in their website development.
At the Young Innovators finals team “Educate” once again demonstrated their technical prowess in app development.
Competing against fifty-four other teams from across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, who had won a number of awards within the Science and Engineering categories, the boys gave a master class to judges on how to successfully develop and market an app for commercial use. The judges were very impressed both with the level of technical complexity of the app but also with their business acumen in terms of how they would promote and market their app to potential customers.
The students developed an educational learning app, entitled “Educate”, to test the abilities of students in a range of subject areas including languages, mathematics and science. The app had been carefully selected for development by the students who had identified a ‘gap’ in the educational apps market.
The boys were awarded a trophy and cash prize for their innovative “use of software for educational purposes” from ‘Go Conqr’, a company that specialises in developing educational learning solutions.
The boys will now represent Northern Ireland in the ‘Engineering’ category at the “Big Bang 2016” at the NEC in Birmingham in March next year.
