FIT Organizes the 4th IT Marathon

FIT Organizes the 4th IT Marathon

Under the patronage of H.E. Dr. Abdullah Al-Khanbashi, Vice Chancellor of UAE University, the Faculty of Information Technology at the United Arab Emirates University organizes the fourth IT Marathon on Thursday May 12, 2011. Every year, the university works with education zones throughout the UAE to host students from all school districts in the Country at the Faculty of Information Technology campus where they compete across three levels of competition further described next. This year’s event is organized in partnership with Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC).Dr. Abdullah Al-Khanbashi will open the Marathon to announce the official launch of the Competition activities.

The aim of this event is to expand young minds’ enthusiasm for information technology and to further encourage IT innovation. This year, nearly 300 students representing more than 80 schools are taking part in the competition.The event will also include interactions with school coaches to bridge the gap between education systems and share knowledge through workshops where participants discover and discuss latest IT topics.

Further details about the scope of IT Marathon competitions, sample problems and contest rules are available at http://itmarathon.uaeu.ac.ae

Competition 1: IT Contest

The highest-level competition at the IT Marathon is the IT Contest. Here, students are challenged to solve programming problems, create illustrative graphics, develop interactive web applications, and troubleshoot basic computer and networking systems. Top ranked teams are honored with trophies and further valuable prizes.

Competition 2: IT Showcase

IT Showcase provides students with an opportunity to display their school projects to peers, university students, academics and industry experts. This competition includes an exhibition area where students exhibit their projects to a judging panel. The top six student projects qualify to the Final stage. Selection of finalist projects is performed by a committee of high school teachers, industry experts and university academics. Finalists are requested to make a short public and live presentation to wider audience about their projects. The best top three projects in the IT Showcase are announced and awarded along with prizes for the other competition categories during the closing ceremony.

Competition 3: IT Thinker

Student participants under the age of 14 compete in the IT Thinker category. Here, kids show their talent and creativity by developing interactive stories, games, animation, simulation and other interactive multimedia applications using a fully Arabic version of a software program called Scratch and available at scrath.uaeu.ac.ae. Over 50 projects have been submitted online for this category. The judging committee has already selected the best 10 projects whose developers are invited to IT Marathon, where the top 3 will be further selected and announced at  the Closing ceremony of the Contest.

Teachers’ Forum

In parallel with the competition a forum is being held for teachers and coaches to discuss latest developments in IT and discuss IT educational programs Workshops on Future Web, Learning Suite (From Microsoft) and Android-based software developments will be presented.

For any enquiry, please contact Faculty of Information Technology Office. Tel: 03-7671059; Fax: 03-7672018.