New high score for Conall in computer coding comp

A Cavan student was among the winners at the 13th annual National Scratch Coding Competition, organised by Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software and the Irish Computer Society.

Conall McManus, a student at Killygarry National School, received a judges' award for his entry Guatemala Bossfight, which was one of 280 entries.

A County Clare student took the top prize. Tom Dandoy, a senior student at Ennisytmon CBS, Ennistymon, won the overall prize with his project 'Spaceship Battles 3' a computer game he designed and built using Scratch and for which he composed the score.

Scratch is a visual programming language that helps children to build key coding skills in a fun and interactive way. The Scratch Coding Competition promotes computing and software development at both primary and secondary school levels and has grown since 2010 alongside the growth in interest in coding.

The national finals brought together top-scoring teams from schools and clubs across the country with participants, aged six years and older, demonstrating their Scratch projects to judges at University of Limerick last week. Themes of this year's entries included healthy eating, social inclusion, recycling and poetry.

“It is so important to nurture and develop coding skills and computational thinking among children and young people. What we see in the National Scratch Competition Finals is the culmination of many months of work for the participants, their teachers and their families and the end result is very impressive. Their projects are a convergence of science and creativity and allows them to see what coding makes possible,” said Dr Clare McInerney, education and public engagement manager with Lero.

Congratulating the winners, Mary Cleary, secretary general of the Irish Computer Society said: “The National Scratch Competition gives young people a chance to show both their creative and critical thinking, as well as their innovation. Technology can be immensely valuable and hold a lot of potential if you learn how to use it and Scratch shows that power in a fun and engaging way. I hope that some of the young people in the finals today will go on to become tomorrow’s IT professionals.”