Imagine Cup 2007

Imagine Cup 07

Imagine Cup Regional Software Design 2007

This year we have had a range of students competing from software engineering, information system and computer science all taking part in the software design challenge where the theme was; "Imagine a world where technology enables a better education for all". The regional competition this year has seen 7 teams with a total of 100 students registered. The competition involved all teams presenting to team of three preliminary judges before moving onto the final round where they competed for the top prize which was held in late June 07.

Imagine Cup Regional Software Design Finals 2007

On Friday, 22nd June, the top 3 teams competing in the New Zealand Imagine Cup Software Design Invitational presented their project to an audience of academics, industry and Microsoft members in the Microsoft New Zealand headquarters in Auckland. For our first ever Software Design Invitational, we had more than 50 people attending with guests from industry, academia and supporters for each team. The teams representing Otago, Waikato and AUT University respectively had the opportunity to wow the panel of judges with their educational software project in less than 20 minutes. It was a tight race with Team Ackermen from Waikato coming on top, and now planning for there all expenses paid trip to Seoul, Korea to take part in the World Wide Finals where they could win up to $25000 USD. Second place winners T4 from Otago, took away an XBOX and game package, and the third place winners, AUT Champs from AUT took a heap of software.

IC2007 Winners and Finalists

Team AUT: AUT University	Team T4: University of Otago
Top Three Finalists
WINNERS::TEAM ACKERMEN - THE UNIVERSITY OF WAIKATO

Project Outline:

There is solid research coming out of universities which shows a decline of interest in physics among secondary school students. The purpose of Gary’s Lab (GL) is to reverse this decline, and provide a mechanism to build students confidence in physics. GL aims to motivate physics students by providing them with an immersive 3D environment in which they are required to solve a physics based problem. Users are tasked with the creation and execution of lab experiments using equipment and basic construction techniques. A simulation of this type gives tremendous freedom, allowing users to explore the results of different experiment setups. It gives users insight into practical physics problems, and a look at the concepts behind them. Furthermore, experiments are not limited in scale. Experiments become more engaging for the user when the items in the simulation are ‘full sized’. The framework of XNA and the AGEIA physics engine facilitate this flawlessly. This is demonstrated in GL through the use of terrain and correct scaling of the player height.

Imagine Cup World Wide Software Design Finals 2007

Winners of the 2007 Imagine Cup held in Seoul are Thailand , with Korea taking 2nd place and Jamaica 3rd. Read below for more details on their project design, click here to read more about Imagine Cup 2008.

Thailand - Team 3KC Returns/Project LiveBook!

Life Book is a software project that converts a text based book into a virtual graphical book on a computer screen. Our project is designed for kindergarten children, who are learning the basic of reading and writing. Obviously, they still cannot read most general books, due to the complexity of language. So with LiveBook, they just put the book in front of a Web camera. Then, the system will capture book pages, run character recognition, read each word and match it with entries in Encarta Encyclopedia. Finally, the view of the book on screen will present each page of the book as a graphical plain with rendered objects due to its text, which will enable children to understand to the book visually even they cannot read it fully.

Korea - Team En#605/Project Finger Code

Recent researches show that the learning process starts with having an interest in or being aware of new ideas, different opinions etc., and we agreed with this. This is the main reason why we chose this idea. This system will give students opportunities of being aware of themselves, others, and the world through their notebooks, because taking notes is one of the most fundamental and natural actions for students in classes. To achieve the goal, the team adopted latest handwriting transmitting and recognizing technologies, and also developed a notable knowledge-network viewer. Students, then, can review their classes effectively, and can see various ideas and relationships about what they learned in the classes.

Jamaica - Team ICAD/Project CADI

CADI is an innovative e-Learning solution which will enhance the delivery of education and extend the learning experience beyond the confines of a physical classroom. This is done by creating a centralized learning environment that connects teachers, students, and resources. Imagine a class with multiple students from various geographic locations who speak different languages, all conversing together effortlessly. CADI facilitates collaboration and distance education that transcends language barriers by allowing individuals to seamlessly communicate and share messages, course notes, and other text based material regardless of the language of origin. CADI also provides educators and students with a plethora of practical tools which will have significant impact on distance education and academia in general. This feature rich solution is poised to equip today’s generation for tomorrow’s possibilities.

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• Anonymous
  May 18, 2008
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