One of the best ways to learn any technology is to be presented with a challenge to apply it to a specific problem or purpose. We have recently seen some great successes by our own ECCE student associates in the Esri Global Content Challenge, and the International Year of Global Understanding storymap competition. Both of these competitions challenged students to use Esri technology and premium content in story maps to produce compelling scientific stories. In the Esri Global Content Challenge last fall, over half of the winning entries and honourable mentions were produced by ECCE student associates. The more recent International Year of Global Understanding named two of its winners from ECCE student associates at McMaster University (both were also recently highlighted in ECCE Spotlight posts: Spencer Elford and Karl Chastko). Karl Chastko also took the time write an article about his experience in the Global Content Challenge.

The ECCE App Challenge:

That brings us to our own App Challenge. This year is the third annual ECCE App Challenge held – you can read the details about how our challenge is organized. Essentially, it is an opportunity for student participants to team up at each of our member schools to use Esri technology and open data to create apps that help solve problems for a specific theme. This year, sustainable transportation was chosen as the theme for the challenge, as it is an urgent and growing concern that we all face both locally and globally. Teams at each school were given one week to develop an application that addresses this theme. Along with their apps, a key component of their submissions includes a video pitch, mission statement, and documentation.

A total of 17 teams (59 students overall) participated from eight different ECCE schools. All of their apps have been added to our GitHub repository for this year’s challenge. In addition to the repository, we have added a new homepage page to our GitHub account, where we present an overview of all of the competing teams, with links to live demonstrations of their apps, and their videos. A complete playlist of their videos has also been assembled on YouTube:

Judging is currently underway – stay tuned for the competition results and winners to be announced at the start of May!