The ICT Learning Centre is involved in the organisation, management and implementation of the following initiatives and events.
Competitions
The ICT Learning Centre organises, mentors and supports UL student involvement in national and international ICT related student competitions. This is an exciting avenue for student further learning which allows individuals and groups to compete against their peers from other institutions and enables them to engage with their future industry peers and network with potential employers. The main competitions in question are:
RoboCode
This is a 1st year programming competition. The premise is to code in the Java programming language the logic for a small graphical tank that will engage in battle within an arena with other competitor robot tanks. The robot tank needs to be smart enough to avoid being hit, while inflicting hits on its competitors and capable of moving around the arena without any kind of manual control. The competitions intention is to allow students extend their early stage programming capabilities and knowledge of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Our students have consistently performed very well in this competition including being the overall competition winners in 2010.
Any 1st year students of the university who have started studying the Java programming language are invited to form a 3 person team in our internal competition.
The center hosts an internal UL competition each February to select the 3 person team that will represent UL at this competition in March.
Games Studio Ireland Challenge
This competition recognises the importance and indigenous growth within the games software development sector of the IT industry with both Microsoft and Activision Publishing, inc. sponsoring this competition. The premise of the competition is for a 3 member undergraduate team to use the theme of a well known computer game (e.g. PacMan) and create an original adaptation of this game. The teams adapted game is designed within the Microsoft Games Studio development framework using the C# programming language. All entrants games are displayed and judged in March each year at the Games Fleadh held in LIT-Tipperary and the judging panel is made up of varied gaming industry professionals who also deliver talks at this convention related to their aspects of the gaming industry..
All ICT students who are currently studying games development or have an interest in this area of IT should consider entering this competition as it provides excellent networking opportunities within this sphere. We generally enter 3 teams annually, multiple prizes are allocated relating to different aspects of game design and development, and over the last years UL teams have won prizes for their adaptations of well known games under the categories of Best in Game Design, Best Original Story, Best in Visual Engineering, Best in Animation and Art and Best Windows 7 Game.
All entrants games are displayed and judged in March each year at the Games Fleadh held in LIT-Tipperary and the judging panel is made up of varied gaming industry professionals who also deliver talks at this convention related to their aspects of the gaming industry..
Games Studio Ireland Challenge Website
Irish Collegiate Programming Competition
This is a logic and programming based competition open to both undergraduate and postgraduate teams. The focus is on problem solving, ability to apply mathematical solutions and correct implementation of solutions within a programming language of the teams choice (from a competition defined list of programming languages). Teams are made up of 3 members and can include members from a non IT area (e.g. maths). The competition day consists of each team competing against all other entrant teams (from UL and other institutions) to solve a series of 8 problems as accurately and quickly as possible over a duration of 4 hours with prizes being awarded to the top 3 teams.
Both Undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in this competition should form their teams as early as possible in the second semester and contact center management as we would be happy to implement some mentoring support for all our students interested in competing in this competition. Over the last number of years, the ICT learning center has mentored and entered approximately 5 teams annually.
The Irish element of this international competition is held each year in University College Cork over a Saturday in early April.
Irish Collegiate Programming Competition Website
ICT Learning Centre Camps for Secondary School Students
The ICT Learning Centre developed and implemented various ICT camps for secondary school students to inform and engage this student group of the core concepts and subjects relevant towards their future studies in ICT related areas. The following are the main initiatives that we have implemented over the last number of years for these potential ICT students.
UL CyberCamp
These summer camps aim is to foster interest and engage secondary level students between 13 and 16 years of age in ICT subjects. The camps are ran with a focus on fostering problem solving and building teamwork within an ICT context. Three camps of 3 days duration are ran each July and August. Each camp has 6 different ICT themed sessions which are:
- Introduction to robotics and programming using Lego Mindstorm robots
- Introduction to Electronics
- Programming using Scratch – A visually interact programming starter set
- Programming using Greenfoot – A Java graphical programming environment
- Arduinos/Sensors – using embedded code to generate sound and solutions
- Music – An introduction to composing music using computers.
The UL Cybercamps have been ran each summer since 2010, catering for in excess of 110 students per camp.
UL Cybercamp Plus
From summer 2017, an additional 2-day advanced Cybercamp was introduced for those secondary school students that had previously attended the initial 3-day Cybercamp, offering them an opportunity to develop both web and Java software applications.