Doha College team wins infotech innovation contest

The first place winning Doha College team members (four to six from left) are seen with the second and third place winners

A team of students from Doha College won first place in the 3rd annual Ibtikar Qatar competition held at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar recently.
The winning team, NEXT, presented their poster which explains the design of their iPhone application, Biotrack.
Underground Technology Movement and EcoBiotechs also from Global Academy International won second and third place, respectively. The winning team also received iPads, sponsored by Qatar Shell.
The first place winning ‘Biotrack’ uses social networks including Facebook and Twitter, to connect the residents of Qatar to the country’s nature and biodiversity environment.
"The application creatively combines the features of iphones to access a BioMap (geotagging), a BioFeeds (RSS feeds), a BioPics (Photo galleries) and a BioCam (GoogleMaps) to access a wealth of information on Qatar’s rich biodiversity (plants and animals) in an entertaining way,” said Selma Limam Mansar, information systems co-ordinator at Carnegie Mellon Qatar.
Ibtikar is an information systems innovation competition for high school seniors and juniors. It encourages students to design creative solutions to some of the important current challenges that society is facing, while at the same time raising their interest in information systems.
This year’s challenge was to design an iPhone application to help promote the United Nations goals for the 2010 year of Biodiversity. 
The two-part programme began with a workshop in November. At the workshop, 91 students from 17 schools were organised into teams and learned the roles of the competition.
They also learned how to design a poster in order to explain and present their project. Students were exposed to the role that Information Systems and innovation play in the marketplace and they also gained a basic understanding of biodiversity.
"The contestants were mentored by Carnegie Mellon students who provided them with advice and feedback. We would like to see the participating schools integrate Ibtikar into their meta-curriculum thus offering more critical support to the students during the two month preparation for the competition,” said Limam Mansar, also a jury member.
The final projects were presented during the competition. Teams were judged based on the originality of their idea, whether it used information systems effectively, its impact of raising awareness, poster design and how well it was presented.
The judging panel also consisted of other Carnegie Mellon professors: Dr April Conkey (ecology and conservation biology), Dr Daniel Phelps (information systems), Dr Divakaran Linginal (information systems), Dr Ian Lacey (information systems), and Alex Cheek (design).
The schools that presented posters in the Ibtikar Qatar 2011 final competition were Al Wakrah Secondary Independent School, Doha College, Doha Independent Secondary School, Global Academy International, Ideal Indian School, MES Indian School, Omar Bin Al-Khattab Secondary Independent School, Raba’a A-Adwyria Secondary Independent School and The International School of Choueifat.