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Bahrain’s tech start-up is alive and well, and conducted its first-ever virtual hackathon last week, attracting more than 125 applicants and 25 unique ideas, writes Naman Arora .
The i-Learn Hackathon, conducted by Brinc Batelco, in collaboration with Injaz and Clever Play was hosted via Zoom, with 30 participants and five teams picked out of the pool of applicants.
The competition themed Remote Learning for the Future, tackled different angles on the remote learning experience including Virtual Reality, digital internship and gamified learning.
Zainab Khamis, programme associate at Brinc and one of the organisers of the hackathon, said: “We received quite a diverse set of applications and the hackathon itself was interesting as students got a taste of what it is like to collaborate virtually, as many offices are doing currently. This was our effort to try and support Team Bahrain by coming up with ideas to make remote learning even more effective.”
The five teams, two of which were high school teams and three were university teams, each collaborated over two days using Zoom and Google for a collaborative workflow. They were mentored along the way by staff from University of Bahrain, St Christopher’s School, Bahrain Polytechnic, Economic Development Board (EDB), Brinc, Injaz, Batelco and Cleverplay.
Due to the short nature of the competition, the teams focussed on defining the problem, identifying the market and researching challenges, leaving the development of a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) on the backburner.
The winning team, “Minds”, pitched an application that utilised Virtual Reality (VR) to provide the visuals and environment of a lab in which science students can carry out experiments. The team was comprised of Fateh Muhammad Kamran, Muhammad Ahsan Azeem, Rachana Hegde, Manal Zafar Khan, Aafia Riaz and Ali Ismaeel Khamdan.
The final presentations were judged by Dr Mohamed Alseddiqi, director of technical and vocational education at the Ministry of Education, Dr Philippe Pringuet, mobile programming lecturer at Bahrain Polytechnic and Sumaya Adel, head of learning & development at Batelco.
Prizes included BD500 cash, a three-month hot desk at Brinc Batelco IoT Hub as well as a selection of Batelco service vouchers.
