The United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) organized on Thursday 19th April at the College of Information Technology Building the 11th National IT Marathon Day for School Students themed ‘Artificial Intelligence for a Better Future’. The event, held in collaboration with the Department of Education and Knowledge and ICT Fund of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, witnessed a wide participation of school students of different grades as well as special needs students.

Professor Mohamed Albaili, UAEU Vice Chancellor, explained in his opening speech that the 11th National IT Marathon Day held at UAEU, the flagship university, “comes in the context of promoting the wise vision of the Late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the UAE’s founding father, to make UAEU lead the UAE higher education. Since its inception in 1976 and thanks to the great attention our wise leadership has placed on it, UAEU made its way to lead the future of UAE education, helping to start a new phase of our nation’s history in leading the future.”

“With that in mind, we at UAEU are keen to explore future prospects though caring for talented and innovative students from all UAE schools. We call upon students for further innovation and creativity in different areas of Information Technology and artificial intelligence to lead the future,” added Professor Albaili.

He stressed that this annual IT Marathon is a national event in the UAE and has become a destination for elite UAE schools and university students to showcase their talents and innovations in artificial intelligence and IT.

During the event, ‘Namshi’, a robot developed by UAEU students was introduced to students, and a video was played on the UAEU’s development process and how it leads the UAE’s future in the field of IT.

The event presented projects, and the creativity of special needs and children, who showed their skills in creating animation and interactive games. It also held an IT test to assess students’ IT knowledge in the areas of web designing, programming and information security.

The activities also featured creative projects exhibition, giving participants the opportunity to showcase their innovative ideas in programming, designing, mobile computing, apps development.  IT4Special competition was held to entertain special needs students. Workshops on using IT in classrooms were organized for teachers, urging them to use latest technologies in classrooms and educating them on the importance of using IT in education.