Students go to first Hackathon

On Nov. 25, Aragon AP Computer Science students convened with Burlingame AP Computer Science (APCS) students at Burlingame High School (BHS) to engage in the first annual Hackathon, an event put on to expose students to real-world applications for their studies. The idea to participate in this event was brought to APCS teacher Lisa Kossiver’s attention by BHS’s APCS teacher, Christina Wade, one of the event’s main organizers.

The event began with of a panel of 10 speakers, including computer programmers, engineers, and business people, who discussed their careers.

Later in the day, students split up into different groups, each mentored by a speaker on the panel.

Groups worked to identify a significant problem in the world, design a technological solution to address the problem—in most cases a computer or iPhone app—and market their solution.

Mentor groups were assigned based on student interest. The vast majority of Aragon students were part of the group lead by Microsoft software engineer Steve Hansen.

“We were encouraged to think creatively and to take risks to come up with a solution,” junior Amy Chen says. “[Hansen] really pushed us into the right direction because we had a lot of different ideas and thoughts due to the huge group … And in the thinking process, he kept us on track with what we needed to do.”

With regards to the group lead by Hansen, junior Aria Farahani says, “Our program was called Quick-Click. It took the most important parts of the Terms of Use and put them into a paragraph.”

Terms of Use, the disclaimers one sees before agreeing to use certain websites or online services, are often glossed over by internet users. Quick-Click sought to summarize the most important stipulations.

Senior Darrell Ten says, “This would allow people to be able to easily read through the Terms of Use to make their lives easier.”

Other apps designed at the event included one that would efficiently track open parking spots and a social media app that would pick out outfits for users to wear.

With regards to the entire event, Kossiver says, “It was a wonderful first-time event. It exposed the students to the many careers that involve computer science and taught them that not all careers pertaining to computer science are coding-oriented.”

Students also valued the way the Hackathon introduced them to different careers in the computer science field. Ten remarks, “It made us realize that coding can be implemented in the real world and what we learn in computer science can also be applied to the real world. There are many jobs that branch off of computer science and the event was a way to identify these possible jobs.

He continues, “The Hackathon was focused on the future, careers after college, and the idea of teamwork. Our teams consisted of members that we didn’t know too well and we all learned to work together towards accomplishing our goal.”