IT-Adventures

Making IT Fun

Iowa's first IT-Olympics were held at Hilton Colosseum last week, and the team from Hampton-Dumont, Iowa (which I helped mentor) took the bronze. Team members Tyler Miller, Quinn Wood, Austin Wilkinson, and Sean Peters competed in the Game Design division, one of three available.

In addition to bringing their game in for judging, these talented students had completed a service project for the school and had documented it with a poster display. During the two day competition, the team had to respond to eight different challenges, each with a specific time limit.

Over 200 students from 25 high schools competed in the three divisions: Game Design, Robotics, and Cyber Defence. In the Robotics Division, student teams designed, built, and programmed robots from specially selected LEGO kits. These robots were placed in a four foot circle, two at a time, and competed to push each other out of the ring. In addition to these "Sumo Wrestling" matches, the Robotics teams were given additional design problems during the two-day event. The last of these was constructing a drag racer for straight course that covered the width of the stadium.

The Cyber Defence teams were given a network of four computers to network together. They were to provide basic services like e-mail and file sharing, while protecting their network from the mistakes of users, real-world challenges (like power outages) and the deliberate attacks of hackers, brought in for the event.

It is hard to describe the tension that mounts as a team closes in on a deadline and they realize that only two of the three parts of their game challenge are finished. Let alone hearing the shouts when a mail-server crashes because a user tried to e-mail a 500 megabyte video file. Everyone cheered when the ball-throwing robot hit the center target twice in a row.

It was thrilling to see kids learning to use computers to solve problems. They learned not just about computers, but about how they face tension and deadlines as a team.

Even though this was the first time the statewide competition was held, many of the teams, including our boys from Hampton, are already planning for next year.