HWDSB Students take the lead organizing Hack the Hammer II
Hack the Hammer II participants working on creating innovative solutions.
Over the December 14-15 weekend, the possibilities were endless for 200 high-school students. Students spent 24 hours creating local and global solutions in innovative workshops with the leading tech corporations at Hack the Hammer II.
The third annual hackathon, Hack the Hammer II, took place at McMaster Innovation Park in Hamilton. It gave talented high school students across the province, including HWDSB students, the opportunity to work with one another in developing helpful technology-related innovations.
Student groups knowledgeable in computer science were using algorithms to tackle topics including developing smart parking in transportation, finding solutions for transporting water safely amid aging infrastructure and determining which trees have diseases for parks and forestry.
One group, creating an electronic board game, explained their game aims to force the player to make choices about investments or daredevil moves, which could either lead to success or elimination from the game. They wanted to make it fun and fair with the choices providing players with the chance to catch up to other players by making the appropriate choices.
A second group explained their app will help the public to recognize danger or issues in their local areas, such as criminal activity and natural disasters. The information would be crowd sourced by app users submitting when and where there is danger, including but not limited to criminal activity, fires and floods. The app would show a heat map of these issues, informing app users of areas they should avoid.
These innovative students are some of the best at what they do. The event was the largest they have had yet with almost 500 students registered. However, the event had a competitive edge, as only 200 students were selected. To register and have the chance to participate, all applicants filled out an online form. This included details such as, why they are passionate about computer science, what they wanted to learn and they were also encouraged to submit their resume and make an account or website with their idea for the hackathon.
This form and the guidelines are created by a group, which includes students from HWDSB’s own Westdale Secondary School. They help to organize and market the entire event for six months to acquire sponsors and participants. The reputation for the event speaks for itself, as many of the applicants heard about the Hackathon by word-of-mouth.
Sponsors for the event included names, such as McMaster Engineering and RBC’s Technology and Operations. The event allowed students to connect with these companies and develop awareness of the programs and internships they offer.
RBC’s Technology and Operations department representatives commented that the students this year were very impressive and that they enjoy using these events to meet and show students the career path they could take in their futures. RBC has several high school internship programs in computer science with focuses in topics, such as cyber security. RBC also runs a hackathon specifically for girls in order to provide them with a space to show off their computer science skills.
STEM subjects are becoming increasingly important as the world moves towards the future and it is fantastic to know that these learning opportunities to collaborate with others are available to our students.
Updated on Monday, December 16, 2019.