Yarl Geek Challenge 5 Junior
Yarl Geek Challenge 5 Juniors was a great event conducted by YIT. YGC5 juniors finals was organised in J| Kokuvil Hindu College “Panchalingam Auditorium”. From May first week to June 10th 2016, we conducted workshops at Mannar, Mullaitivu, Thunukkai, Valanai, Vavuniya and Jaffna. And individually 507 schools were invited via post. And Yarl Thinakural gave us a media support. We allowed the students to register their teams in three ways; By posting the application form to the Provincial Department. Or by mailing to our event mail address or though our YGC5 website .
One week later. It was time for the finals. 16th and 17th were the chosen dates for those youngsters to compete. On 16th the participants had to work with the mentors to polish their idea and enhance their pitching style. Also, before ending the day, there was a special session about pitching ideas was given to the participants, so that they know how to present the whole work in the given 4 minutes.
The D-Day for the juniors turned up the next day. Every team presented their product in their unique way of pitching and everyone did it well. Most of the teams came up with educational websites, but a few teams had also designed websites with business purposes. Compared to previous years, this year’s Junior challenge also saw many hardware and mobile apps designed by the talented youngsters that took part.
Totaly this year we had received 170 applications. In that, around 50% of the applications were hardware, 30% of Web and 20% of mobile applications. We had applications from all 12 zones.
On June 11, we had our Zonal level competitions. Evaluations were held in five places to reach all 12 educational zones. They were,
In Jaffna
Vadamarachchi - [for vadamarachi and Thenmaradchi zones] -At Puloly Computer Resource Center.
Island - [for Isalan zone] Velanai Computer Resource Center.
Jaffna - [Valikamam and Jaffna Zones] Vembadi high school jaffna.
In Mullaitivu
[For Mullaitivu, Kilinochchi and Thunukkai zones] Vidyananda College, Mulliyavalai.
In Vavuniya
[For Vavuniya North & South, Mannar and Madu zones] Vavuniya South Computer Resource Center.
From this Zonal level competition 34 teams were selected for the finals.
Winners of the Yarl Geek Challenge Season 5 Juniors
The Season’s overall winners were a team from Vavuniya Madya Maha Vidyalayam. The team has designed an Arduino based hardware called “Library Management System”. It is one of the commonest issues at libraries. To solve the problem, these youngsters have designed a device which would let a bulb light up in the shelf where the book you are searching for is. The only thing you have to do is, search it on a PC, and the device would let you know. “Half the time, we couldn’t find the book we want at our library. They are mostly misplaced. This issue made us thought of innovating the “Library Management System,” said Kajanan from the team.
“Pets love to sleep under parked vehicles. Yet, when the driver decides to take the car out, it turns into an accident if the pet is still under the wheel. This could even happen to naughty kids who love to play around the vehicles, therefore we chose to find a solution, said the team from Karainagar Hindu College that has won the best hardware award. “We have designed it in a way where the device would send a signal to the driver inside if there is something under the vehicle,” the team further explained.
There is this one man army from St. Xavier’s College, Mannar who has won the best web app award at YGC5. He has designed a cloud computing platform. This platform he has designed has got features like personal Locker, notifications, and messaging systems, unlike Google drive and dropbox. Also, you can share files through FTP, and with the help of Ajax, a technology he has used, you could access a folder without refreshing.
Finally, the award for the Best mobile app was won by the team from Hartley College. These guys have designed a solution called “office mode” which would turn your mobile into silent mode, and send auto-replies if a call or text is received when the mode is activated.