Winners of the 2024 South Africa Hackathon Announced

Winners of the 2024 South Africa Hackathon Announced

Inaugural South Africa Blockchain in Education Hackathon and Symposium Results

18 April 2024 — The Immersive Education Initiative today officially announced the winners of the inaugural South Africa Blockchain in Education hackathon (coding competition). The hackathon and corresponding symposium were hosted by Stellenbosch University in collaboration with South Africa's National Institute for Theoretical and Computational Sciences (NITheCS) and the Switzerland-based Knowledge Foundation international standards organization.

The public hackathon featured a total of $70,000 (1,279,876 South African Rand) in prizes. 125 programmers competed in the hackathon, representing a total of 36 countries.

The special event, sponsored by DFINITY Foundation and Lando & Anastasi, LLP, took place on February 6th and 7th during which world-renowned experts led a series of public talks focused on the impact of blockchain technology on education.

Open International Standards

Open International Standards (OSI) for blockchain in the field of education were presented during the event, together with select Technology Working Groups (TWGs) for qualified researchers and practitioners, including Artificial Intelligence in Education TWG (AIE.TWG), Authentication and Anti-fraud TWG (AAF.TWG), Protecting Learner Data TWG (PLD.TWG), and Analytics and Visualization TWG (AAV.TWG).

Hackathon

Based on the success of the $40,000 (732,479 Rand) hackathon held during the 2023 Blockchain in Education Summit at Oxford, and the $75,000 (1 373,398 Rand) United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Coding4Integrity Hackathon recently held in Qatar, a similar hackathon was held in Stellenbosch.

Winners of the 2024 South Africa Hackathon

The inaugural South Africa hackathon featured two first (top) prizes, and two second prizes.

First prize winners were awarded $10,000 in professional Internet Computer developer grants by DFINITY Foundation and $500 in Knowledge Token® intellectual currency for each team member.

Second prize winners were awarded $5,000 in professional Internet Computer developer grants by DFINITY Foundation and $500 in Knowledge Token® intellectual currency for each team member.

Following are the winning teams and the countries they represented for the hackathon:

First (Top) Awards

•   Arjaan Buijk and Patrick Friedrich [United States and Germany]


•   Denys Kushnarov, Eduard Peretokin and Oleksii Kryshtopa [Ukraine]

 

Second Awards

•   Fatema Alaali, Hamad Alatawi, Mustafa El Tahawy,
    Zahra Alqassab, Bader Omran and Ali Alojaimi [Bahrain]


•   Joseph Edoh and Osaretin Frank [Nigeria]

 


UPCOMING HACKATHONS & CONFERENCES

 

 

SPONSORS



Internet Computer

Lando & Anastasi

 

World-renowned Speakers

Speakers at Immersive Education events have included faculty, researchers, staff, administrators and professionals from Harvard University (Harvard Graduate School of Education, Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, and Harvard Kennedy School of Government), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), MIT Media Lab, The Smithsonian Institution, United Nations, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), United States Department of Education, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), United States Department of the Interior (DOI) National Park Service (NPS), United States National Portrait Gallery (NPG), Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Stanford University, Cornell University, Boston College, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), University of Southern California (USC), Columbia University Teachers College (TC), University of Maryland (UMD), Duke University, Amherst College, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Twitter, Disney, Oracle, Computerworld, University of Oxford, University of Zurich, Italian Ministry of Education National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research (INDIRE), the Louvre Museum and Palace of Versailles, Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), Sorbonne University (France), Keio University (Japan), Nippon TV (Japan), National University of Singapore (NUS), Government of New South Wales (Australia), Israel Ministry of Education MOFET Institute (Israel), University of Glasgow (UK), European Learning Industry Group (ELIG), Università degli Studi di Padova (University of Padua, Italy), University of Zurich (Switzerland), Trinity College (Ireland), University of Barcelona (Spain), Italian National Research Council (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche), Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain), and many more world-class organizations detailed at https://summit.ImmersiveEducation.org

 

PRESS CONTACT

Annelise Martson
Immersive Education Initiative
https://ImmersiveEducation.org
annelise.martson@ImmersiveEducation.org

 

 

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Millions of Learners Worldwide

Immersive Education Initiative, the world's foremost experts in immersion and immersive technology, is a non-profit international collaboration of educational institutions, research institutes, museums, consortia and companies. The Initiative was established in 2005 with the mission to define and develop standards, best practices, technology platforms, training and education programs, and communities of support for virtual worlds, virtual reality, augmented and mixed reality, simulations, game-based learning and training systems, immersive teaching and immersive learning platforms, and fully immersive environments such as caves and domes.

Thousands of faculty, researchers, staff and administrators are members of the Immersive Education Initiative, who together service millions of academic and corporate learners worldwide.

Collaborators and Summit speakers include faculty, researchers, graduate students, and executives from the world's leading academic and cultural organizations, universities, and companies, such as United Nations, United States Department of Education, Harvard University, University of Oxford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), The Smithsonian Institution, Stanford University, NASA, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Twitter, Disney, Oracle, Computerworld, Italian Ministry of Education, the Louvre Museum and Palace of Versailles, Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), Sorbonne University (France), Keio University (Japan), Nippon TV (Japan), National University of Singapore (NUS), Government of New South Wales (Australia), Israel Ministry of Education, University of Glasgow (UK), European Learning Industry Group (ELIG), Università degli Studi di Padova (University of Padua, Italy), University of Zurich (Switzerland), Trinity College (Ireland), University of Barcelona (Spain), Italian National Research Council (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche), Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain), and many more world-class organizations

To learn more visit https://ImmersiveEducation.org


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