As part of the TechnoArtKPI Festival, which is held annually to promote engineering among schoolchildren, an online hackathon Hack Space for Earth took place in early June 2021. The festival partners were “The School of the Future” Charitable Foundation, the Silpo supermarket chain, the company Progresstech-Ukraine, the Noosphere Engineering School, and Raiffeisen Bank Aval.
This time, TechnoArtHakaton broke all records in terms of participants getting engaged in projects. It started when the organizers asked students to choose a direction to develop their project on space issues. During the first week of June, there were webinars, masterclasses, selection of research topics from different categories, formation of teams. For the first time, students of the FBT, FEL, FRE, IAT E.O. Paton Institute of Materials Science and Welding of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, the Vocational College of Engineering and Management of the National Aviation University, and volunteers became mentors for schoolchildren. More than 100 people registered for the online competition: schoolchildren of all ages, parents, and teachers, who also wanted to watch the hackathon. When a team chose the task, it had a week to develop innovative solutions. The teams-participants attended webinars of experts and mentors who inspired and helped them cope with the assignments.
The hackathon took place in two age categories. Schoolchildren of 5-8 grades were able to test their skills in the category of “Unlimited Creativity” while older students competed in the categories: “Space Legislator”, “Explore Technologies”, “Universe Engineer”, “Create an Ecosystem” and “Stay in touch”.
In the “Unlimited Creativity” category, 7 schoolchildren won prizes out of 12 registered participants.
In the senior age group, with more than 30 participants, 4 teams won prizes. Those were the teams: Oxygen Researchers with the project “SMOP on MKS” (“СМОП на МКС”) in the category “Create an ecosystem”; Next Space with the project “Protective coating NGSC-01” in the category “Universe Engineer”; Startupers with the project “Spectam” in the category “Stay in touch”; Future Incognita with the project “Entrance to Europe” in the category “Explore technologies”. The Audience Award went to the Humanisation team with the project “New Vision” in the Universe Engineer category.
The winners received gifts from Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
It is essential that in addition to traditional topics using programming and data processing, participants chose relevant topics: detecting cracks in materials, creating radio channels, and more. The jury was deeply impressed with the level of work and responsible attitude to the preparation of projects. The most engaging projects received certificates for the Sikorsky Challenge Startup School.
According to Oksana Zakharchenko, member of the organizing committee of TechnoArtKPI and Deputy Dean of FRE, positive feedback from participants and the jury on social networks, words of gratitude on telegram channels, and happy eyes of the winners encourage organizers to further achievements and new ideas.
For Reference: The Hackathon TechnoArtKPI-2021 took place from May 1 - June 6, 2021. More than 70 students of 5-10 grades registered. The hackathon formed 11 teams from 2 to 4 people and had in total - 37 schoolchildren. The category of 5-8 grades had 1 team and 12 individual participants. The event covered 49 participants and 9 student mentors from Kyiv, Rivne, Cherkasy, Dnipro, and other Ukrainian cities. During the week, the hackathon partners hold 6 webinars. On Saturdays and Sundays, the participants presented their projects live. Also, Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute gave excursions around the university for everyone for two days.