News

UAEU Announces 19th April IT Marathon

03-Apr-2018

ABU DHABI - The United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) announced that the launch of the 11th edition of the IT Marathon will be held on the 19th April 2018 for UAE schools and universities, a press release by the University stated. Themed "Artificial Intelligence for Better Life", the marathon is organized by the UAEU College of Information Technology (CIT) in collaboration with ICT Fund of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), and the Department of Education and Knowledge (ADEK), Abu Dhabi.

Professor Khaled Shuaib, Acting Dean, CIT, explained that the marathon is one of the annual pioneer initiatives held by the college to discover and nurture talented and innovative students in this vital field. It aims to prepare a generation of IT young talents and intellectuals, and to hone their skills through encouraging and supporting them, as this field is pivotal to the educational process of all fields and one of the knowledge resources.

Dr. Fady Al Najjar, Head of the organizing committee, pointed out “The Marathon seeks to motivate students in the field of Information Technology through involving them in a gratifying and challenging competition, encourage them to work in teams to test their IT skills and present them to their peers and academics”.

The marathon will feature a number of competitions including ‘Young Intellect’ for students from grade 3-9, using scratch program or Touch Develop program, to design programs and innovative games, and ‘Clever Scientist Competition’ to develop a mobile application called ‘My Unachieved Dream’. This competition shows the imagination ability of children to achieve their dreams.

Throughout the event, students will showcase their innovative projects on educational IT, artificial intelligence, web designing, communication, computer security and cloud computing to be then evaluated by a specialized jury to decide the winning projects. IT Team Competition is another one where participants are assessed based on their IT knowledge. Another competition to be judged at the event is the “IT4Special Needs’ which provides a suitable environment for special need students to be able to compete and offers them an opportunity to showcase their IT skills by presenting their new IT programming idea.