Apps4Gaps Competition Challenges Primary, Secondary and Third Level Students to Create Apps Using Public Data
Insight, Centre for Data Analytics partnered initiative aims to encourage students on the island of Ireland to develop ideas and apps using publicly available data
Tuesday, 07 January, 2014 The Insight Centre for Data Analytics is inviting primary, secondary and third level students to take part in an Island of Ireland competition to create apps from freely available and publicly accessible data.
Individuals and teams of up to three participants can enter in one of two ways, either by submitting an idea for an app as a concept entry or by creating an app and submitting a working app using data from Census 2011.
The aim is to develop ideas and create applications (apps) that will provide innovative and fresh ways of exploiting the Open Data available from the 2011 Census, in areas such as transport, housing and planning.
January 31st is the closing date to register as a competition entrant and the closing date for concept entry or a working app entry is April 11th. Entry forms for teams of three must be signed by a teacher, lecturer or course instructor from the students’ educational primary, secondary or third level institution.
Brendan Smith, Outreach Officer at Insight NUI Galway (formerly known as DERI) said, “Apps, in this case software that can operate on a mobile telephone or any other online accessible device, is a communications icon of our Internet age. We want to empower and up-skill our youngsters to learn how to make their own powerful modern technology applications from freely available data.”
He added “Apps4Gaps promotes the ethos that the software thus created from the freely available social and economic data contained in the Census 2011 should be used to improve the lives of ordinary peoples, their communities or society generally.”
Apps4Gaps is a partnership between the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) in conjunction with the Department of Education and Skills, the Department of Education Northern Ireland, Project Maths, Coderdojo and the Digital Repository of Ireland.
Further Apps4Gaps information such as registration, datasets and rules as well as examples of civic apps that can be created from open data, can be found at www.apps4gaps.ie.
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