ALEX LAMING, HEAD OF COMPUTING

On Wednesday 20 March the Grand Final of the Amazon GetIT competition was held for Queenswood students.

The winning team: Izzy, Arianne and Niyah, pictured with judges Rev Douglas and Mrs Khan (Head of Year 8)

All our Year 8 computer scientists had spent the last 10 weeks working in teams to design a new app for a community group of their choice. Along the way they had used the Amazon Canvas web platform to learn about emerging technologies, cloud computing and Amazon web services as well as important non technical content such as teamwork, collaboration and listening skills. In designing their apps students also needed to learn about and show consideration of environmental sustainability and accessibility for a wide range of impairments.

Students worked hard to create wireframe designs for their apps and had them assessed in class by each other and the teacher. Finalists were chosen to then present their design to the whole year group and our guest judges, Reverend Kate and Mrs Khan. The ideas they had come up with were really interesting and showed great creativity.

In third place was a group called Travel E. They had designed an app called Travel Explore which is aimed at teenagers to help them to be able to plan trips and visits. In this group were Flo, Katriel, Saphia and Sakura. The app contains features such as a recommendation engine to help make suggestions and cloud storage to store user data and profiles.

In second place were a group called Namo kids made up of Nayia, Annabelle, Meg and Olivia. Their idea was a school uniform recycling app called School Threads which would allow parents to obtain free school uniforms and recycle their own. Their app makes use of an interactive map, GPS location data and messaging functions.

The winning app was by a group called The Zen Zebra Team. The team is made up of Niyah, Arianne and Izzy (pictured below). They presented their highly detailed plan for an app to combat mental health issues in teens called Zen Zebra. It has impressive features such as a quiz for users to take which then maps the app settings to responses given, bullet journals, online stories, diet and sleep trackers. In terms of technology it makes use of AI to produce recommendations and cloud data storage to store user preferences.

All participating finalists received an Easter egg and a certificate. Mr Laming and Mr Doherty would like to congratulate Year 8 for excellent participation in the Amazon GetIT program and for their superb collaboration in their teams to devise such inspiring ideas.