- European Commission
- Enterprise and Industry
- e-Skills Week
e-Skills Week competition winners announced
As part of e-Skills Week 2010, a competition was launched to reward young people and teachers who demonstrate a commitment to ICT and excellent digital skills.
European finalists from the Czech Republic, Greece, Ireland, The Netherlands, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom were invited to attend the award ceremony organised on 5 March 2010 in the e-Skills week closing event “Go DigITal!”.
The selection criteria looked at how the candidate projects and nominees had achieved innovation and excellence in their field, but also how the use of ICT could have a positive impact on society. The objective was to identify examples of good practice on how the use of ICT can benefit not only individuals, but also schools, young entrepreneurs, job-seekers, people with special needs and society as a whole.
Representatives from ACER, CEPIS, CISCO, European Schoolnet, the European Employability Alliance and Hewlett Packard presented the awards to the following lucky winners and runner-ups.
e-Skills Prize for Entrepreneurship & e-Skills, sponsored by CISCO
Winners: Cezar Ursan and Adrian Brudaru, Romania
Runner-ups: Kirsty Knowles, Maeve Claire McCambridge, Ciara McCann, Ireland
e-Skills Prize for ICT in Education, sponsored by ACER
Winner: Evangelos Koltsakis, Greece
Runner-up: Maria del Carmen Rodríguez García, Spain
e-Skills Prize for Employability and Vocational Training, sponsored by European Employability Alliance, EEA
Winner: Augusto Lima, Portugal
Runner-up: Weronika Pielas, Poland
e-Skills Prize for Digital Competence, sponsored by Hewlett Packard
Winner: Jeroen Van Gorsel, The Netherlands
Runner-up: Toby Henness, United Kingdom
e-Skills Prize for Digital Competence – Women, sponsored by CEPIS
Winner: Anna Voríšková, Czech Republic
Runner-up: Louisa Luciani, Sweden
e-Skills Prize for Digital Expression, sponsored by European Schoolnet
Winners: Boyd Winkelman and Jorrit Tromp, The Netherlands
Runner-up: Maximum Ciprian and team, Romania
e-Skills Prize for Entrepreneurship & e-Skills
Sponsored by CISCO
Winners: Cezar Ursan and Adrian Brudaru, ROMANIA
Project: Green Cell Phone Charger
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plws14A7-1E
Source competition: APDETIC
The Green Cell Phone Charger is a device that turns mechanical energy into electric energy and by doing so it charges a 3.7 V battery, which is used for most of the cell phones. The original prototype used a quartz based device attached to the shoe and with every step it produced electric energy which was then stored in an accumulator, which charged the cell phone battery.
Cezar and Adrian tell about their project: “We did some research and if one million people were using this product on their mobile phones (which is only 0,029% of total cell phones in the world), they would save up to 4.793.910 USD per year on energy bills and 2312,6 tons of CO2 from being thrown into the atmosphere.“
“After the invention of the prototype we put a lot of work in Research & Development, because we want to make some major adjustments in terms of design, performance, durability and comfort.”
“We want to turn this product idea into a start-up company. We already did a market research in Romania and a business plan, and next we will finish the improved prototype of the first Green Cell Phone Charger.“
Runner-ups: Kirsty Knowles, Maeve Claire McCambridge, Ciara McCann, IRELAND
Project: LeapNI
URL: http://78.137.164.61/~fitie/index.php?page=e-skills-competitions
Source competition: Young Enterprise
Three students from the Belfast Model School for Girls, Little Flower Girls’ School and Our Lady of Mercy Girls’ School have jointly formed a Young Enterprise company called LeapNI. An integral aspect to produce a viable business has been the use of ICT skills.
Kirsty, Maeve and Ciara have utilised the most modern software applications such as ‘Adobe Photoshop CS3’ and ‘Adobe Illustrator’ to digitally produce a range of vector based images for use in various media including a fully illustrated children’s book and an interactive CSS based website. This website was constructed in the ‘Dreamweaver’ web page building application.
e-Skills Prize for ICT in Education
Sponsored by ACER
Winner: Evangelos Koltsakis, GREECE
Project: Teaching Science in Art High School of Ampelokipoi
URL: http://kga.based.gr
Source competition: eLearning Awards
Evangelos Koltsakis is running a wordpress blog/website including interactive educational material, which supports the physics and geology-geography courses he teaches at Art High School. The objective is to help the students in the pedagogical use of ICT, in order to help their progress in the “traditional” school. Since 2009, in the framework of the “Digital Classroom” program every 13 year old student in Greece receives a personal netbook for use both at school and at home. In this new and innovative situation, such a website has been considered essential and helpful.
Runner-up: Maria del Carmen Rodríguez García, SPAIN
Project: INTO NEWS
URL: http://euscholastic.wikispaces.com/
Source competition: eLearning Awards
INTO NEWS is a project in which young people are reporters for the eUTopical paper - playing with the ideas of EU, topical and Utopia. They comment and express their points of view on different events that take place in their home countries and elsewhere in Europe. They write, create and edit articles about European and local topics. In each edition there is one keynote. The keynote is accompanied by events organized in each partner school. The project is also planning to carry out research to get a wider view on young people's attitudes towards different kinds of areas.
e-Skills Prize for Employability and Vocational Training
Sponsored by the Europan Employability Alliance, EEA
Winner: Augusto Lima, PORTUGAL
Project: Technology, Innovation and Initiative (TII)
The Technology, Innovation and Initiative (TII) project is targeted to unemployed people. The project wants to meet a two-fold objective: enable the beneficiaries, at socio-economic disadvantage, to have contact with new technologies and acquire skills so as to be able to be reinserted into the labour market.
The project provides various training courses, focusing on two key themes: information technology and entrepreneurship. Learning is done using an online platform. During the training course the trainees learn to create a curriculum vitae, respond to job advertisements and be active job-seekers. The students develop skills in new areas that make them more attractive in the labour market.
Right from the start, the TII project got the support of the Office of Employment and Vocational Training. According to a survey conducted in May 2008, 40% of the trainees had gotten a new job, and 6% were self-employed after completion of the training. In addition, MoUs were made with companies in order to integrate beneficiaries of the program in their activities.
Runner-up: Weronika Pielas, POLAND
Project: e-Centres
The e-Centres project renders accessible digital technologies to those who have limited or no access to it: inhabitants of rural areas and disabled people. This includes free of charge access to computers with equipment and software adjusted to the users’ needs, Internet access, e-learning courses and vocational tools. All the services are free of charge and close to the users. Trained staff in the centres assures friendly assistance.
The centres also have a potential to serve as “incubators” of local initiatives aiming at social integration. They are places where many groups such as seniors or disabled people meet to learn together. As a result, people who live in rural areas may not only get in touch with modern technologies, but also learn, that they can change their lives.
e-Skills Prize for Digital Competence
Sponsored by: Hewlett Packard
Winner: Jeroen Van Gorsel, THE NETHERLANDS
Project: Minos
URL: http://gorsel.ostrea.in/Minos2/index.php
The project Minos originates in the Greek course Jeroen took at the secondary school. As part of the important final assignment, he wanted to compare ancient writing systems of Greek civilization around the Aegean Sea. By comparing the writing systems of several ancient people it is possible to prove contact between these people by similarities in the writing. In order to do so, he planned to set up an online working platform in which inscriptions of clay tablets could be stored.
By storing these inscriptions, not only would it be possible to search for symbols and combinations of symbols on clay tablets, but it would also be accessible for the rest of the world as a unique database. Therefore, the Minos project contributes to the academic research in this field of study. Jeroen is planning on enhancing the database software to look for patterns of signs and inscriptions, on the basis of which certain grammar structures of these ancient languages can be found. The academic world has already shown interest in the project.
Runner-up: Toby Henness, United Kingdom
Source competition: Cisco NetWorking Academy
“The Skills contests enabled me to prove my IT competence and go on to my chosen career,” tells Toby.
“I competed in my first competition, UK Skills Hardware and Software National Finals, in June 2006 age 17, achieving 2nd place. I was shortlisted to compete in World Skills 2007 in Japan. The competition consists of Cisco, Linux and Microsoft tasks over a 4 day period. I narrowly missed out on competing and was put forward to represent UK at Euroskills 2008.”
“The Euroskills competition is a team event consisting of a Microsoft Specialist, a Cisco Engineer, a Linux Expert and a Project manager. I was the project manager for the UK team as I had knowledge of all the technical skills with good communication skills. The team came 5th out of 10 countries. Individually I was the highest marked competitor dropping only 0.2 of a mark the entire competition. “
“These experiences helped me to follow my dream and become a lecturer at 19 in Cisco, Linux and Microsoft teaching students who are on the commercial certification courses as well as degree students. I helped train the UK competitor for World Skills 2009 who finished 5 overall and am part of the organising team for World Skills 2011.”
e-Skills Prize for Digital Competence – Women CEPIS
Sponsored by: CEPIS
Winner: Anna Voríšková, CZECH REPUBLIC
Project: Folmíci
URL: http://www.folmici.cz
Source competition: Junior Internet 2009
Fourteen-Year-Old Anna applied to the Junior Internet 2009 competition with her blog ”Folmíci”. She is particularly proud of the content that she creates herself: handmade comics, painting book and serials.
According to her words, Anna is trying to fight for the right use of the Czech language and avoid language garbles that are widely used particularly among traditional "girl blogs". In the future she would like to add some new features and translate her blog into English.
Lately the website has been moved to a new domain and Anna has started to cooperate with another student who helps her with the programming. A new children forum with galleries and other features has been added. Anna has also developed a close cooperation with the Klaun NGO which is helping hospital patients.
Runner-up: Louisa Luciani, SWEDEN
Source competition: IT-girl of the year
Louisa Luciani was identified as the winner of the IT-girl of the year -competition organised by Microsoft Sweden. The prize aims at presenting talented young women, studying IT.
Louisa Luciani is doing a degree in Computer Engineering, with focus on algorithms, programming languages and logic, at the Chalmers University of Technology. Louisa was interested in mathematics and logic already at high school when she, among other things, built her own computer. At the same time she was involved in a computer club. Louisa is active in informing, involving and empowering other female students of IT, in part through her involvement in the conference Datatjej "Computergirl" 2009.
e-Skills Prize for Digital Expression
Sponsored by: European Schoolnet
Winners: Boyd Winkelman and Jorrit Tromp, THE NETHERLANDS
Project: TV Yo
URL: http://www.tvyo.nl
Source competition: Gouden Apenstaart
TV Yo is an online television channel set up by and for children. The team of youngsters in the age of 12 to 15 build and maintain the website, program, animate, film, interview and make live broadcasts on all sorts of topics: fun, entertaining and informative. Creativity is the core trademark of TV Yo. Irony and satire together with journalism makes it a channel to watch.
Every Sunday at 3 pm TV Yo has a live online broadcast. Not only is this team full of inspiration and makes well-thought movies, they have built and designed their online channel themselves and used several ICT tools to bring their expression on the internet. By creating ‘groups’ they also give other creative youngsters the possibility to express themselves online. In addition, the team uses social networks such as Hyves (the Dutch equivalent of Facebook) and Twitter.
Runner-up: Maximum Ciprian and team, ROMANIA
Project: No Escape
URL: http://dpd.eun.org/dpd2010-portlet/uploads2010/01CA00BCE93E7340B793A0DACD7EAE3A/No%20escape.avi
Source competition: Data protection day
The 2nd edition of the Data protection day competition, "Think Privacy", aimed at raising awareness the protection of personal data. The Romanian team of CN "ATLaurian" was ranked second with their short film "No Escape". The video shows how uploading a photo on a website can become a regrettable act and calls for attention. Students who participated in the project are: Maximum Ciprian, Razvan Chirila, Edward Climate, Razvan Diaconu, Onofraş Aida, Amelia Arghir, Andreea Pintilie Adrian Rogoz, Radu Munteanu, Daniel Costas, supported by professor Marinela Acsinte and professor of computer Aphrodite Giocaş.
