Dean Klugman – Year 5

Aidan Kanevsky – Year 5

Dean and I entered the Young ICT Explorers which was a competition where you had to build something that uses digital technology. For example, it could be an app that you made, it could be coding or even making your own robot.

To enter this competition, we created a website called DnA Pet Care on snappy.appypie. Our website helps pet owners or prospective pet owners learn how to care for either dogs, cats, birds, fish, rabbits and guinea pigs. It will tell you what to get before you buy/adopt a pet, what to feed your pet, what to give your pet to live, how to treat it, a food chart for each animal and also a special section for dogs about how to train them. If you would like to view our app you can find it at http://snappy.appypie.com/html5/dna-pet-care

Last Sunday was judging Day at The University of New South Wales. The day was full of exciting moments. Our day started as we collected our lanyards and went to find the spot where we would be setting up our project. When everyone had finished setting up their projects we went to a welcoming ceremony. At the ceremony they talked about all their sponsors and the prizes, the prizes were: 1^st place= $150 Visa card for each person and a trophy, 2^nd place= $100 Visa card for each person, 3^rd place= $50 Visa card for each person, 4^th place= a merit certificate. There was also a Student Choice Award where the students vote and whoever wins gets a $50 Visa card for each person.

After that ceremony we went around and looked at other posters and the judges came around to judge each project. We then had lunch and the judges finished looking at all the projects. Finally it came to the end of the day and they announced who won. The winner was a drone that could fly over a forest and find where there were objects on firetrails, like fallen trees. This meant that if there was a fire, fire trucks could drive through the forest to get to the fire.

Second place was a project that would make people less scared of robots. It is a robot that paints art when you finish a circuit and give it commands. Third place was a shark net camera. Whenever the shark net gets knocked the camera would take a photo and send it to a life guard, and if there was an animal that was stuck the net, someone could help it get untangled. Next was the merit award which went to a ordering pad for blind people that has braille and other things to help them. Lastly the Student Choice Award went to a water-filtering system. It used an archimedes screw to move water from a lower place to a higher place and dropped water through charcoal pebbles and sand to filter the water. When the award ceremony finished we went to pack up our project and leave the university.

Some of the challenges we faced included the fact that the software we were using to make our website didn’t always save our work so we had to repeatedly write the same information again. As well as that, we had to think about design and find colours that would be visible with the writing, and also find suitable backgrounds that link to pets. Lastly, during that Sunday, Dean and I found it challenging to think of a script about our project so when the judges come around we knew what to say and to be able to answer their questions.

Some of our favourite entries from other schools included a car that had a few sensors that would stop the car from going into a wall but turn it instead. There was also a fire truck that would sense if there was a fire and if there was then it would beep. We also loved the winning projects which were some of our favourite entries.

Dean and I are looking forward to getting our project started for next year, maybe something mechanical. Dean and I have also started learning how to code with Python so we can enter a lot more complex project next time. We absolutely loved that Sunday and loved making the app and we really think you will like making a ICT project and you could maybe win!

To see what students from other schools entered, have a look at the photos here:  https://goo.gl/tdzfJj 

To learn more about the competition, see here: http://www.youngictexplorers.net.au/ 

It’s never too early to start designing and prototyping for next year.