This year we were lucky enough to recruit some special judges to help us with Coolest Projects: Mitch Resnick, Eben Upton, Hayaatun Sillem, Limor Fried, and Tim Peake.
For young people who enjoy making things with technology, Coolest Projects is an amazing opportunity to get creative, have fun, learn from others, and be a part of something truly special.
After much deliberation, our judges have picked out some of their favourites from the Coolest Projects online showcase!
Which projects did Mitch Resnick like the best?
Mitch Resnick is Professor of Learning Research at the MIT Media Lab, and his Lifelong Kindergarten research group develops the Scratch programming software and online community! His life’s passion is developing new technologies and activities to engage young people in creative learning experiences.
“If things go wrong it’s not a problem, it’s an opportunity to learn new things, to make adjustments and try again and you’ll keep on learning and learning.”
Young tech creators registered projects from their homes in 39 countries, including Ireland, Australia, Palestine, UK, USA, India, and Indonesia. In total, an incredible 560 projects from 775 young creators are part of the showcase.
These are the projects that Mitch liked the most:
Oisín, Naoise: ‘Autistically Awesome’
“A 5-minute coded animation created through Scratch 3.0 which presents a powerfully emotive conversation between myself and my younger brother examining how autism affects our lives.”
Elana, Saibh: Exploring Schools
“Primary school students and their parents can find choosing the right post-primary school a daunting task. Our project looked at bridging the gap between post-primary schools and prospective students.”
Mark – Mark’s Coronavirus Game
“I’ve made a fun children’s game for my Adafruit PyGamer […] I chose to make this game to teach kids in a fun way that soap kills viruses.”
Adarsh: Raspberry Pi-based, Low-Cost Contactless Vital Signs Monitor
“My project is a low-cost, contactless vital signs monitor that detects skin temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and peripheral capillary oxygen saturation (SpO2). It can assist in preventing sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and other health problems like sleep apnea.”
Matteo, Massimo, Jacopo: Sheetcheat.xyz
“Sheetcheat is a website built to convert computer text to handwritten text. […] Our project was produced to design handwritten text, based on the user’s own handwriting, to help people who feel uncomfortable starting on computer written text.”
Cathal: Ukelectric
“I made an electric ukulele out of cardboard, tinfoil and a micro:bit, I used MakeCode for micro:bit to program it […] I chose to make a ukulele because I enjoy playing music and I also like playing the ukulele. ”
You can view all the projects — games, hardware builds, Scratch projects, mobile apps, and more — in our showcase gallery now.
This year’s Coolest Projects online showcase wouldn’t be possible without the support of our sponsors — thank you!
