Young coders from across the country come together to solve real-world problems

Oakridge International School hosted Codefest 2019, the Season 2 of Bangalore's first overnight school coding event on 19th & 20th January.

Continuing with the overwhelming popularity received last year, this year also witnessed a tremendous response and huge participation of about 32 teams with over 100 students from different states including Karnataka, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Punjab.

At Codefest, young coders tackle various enduring problems of significant domestic and global importance. The participants from junior and senior categories came up with innovative solutions to some real-world problems. A group of students from The International School of Bangalore came up with an innovative idea to create a mobile app that can help decrease the traffic congestion.

This was one of the most-applauded ideas at the event, which won the winner title under the seniors' category. Their idea is to monitor the road surface, calculate the number of potholes as well as the depth of it and connect the authorities to know the impact, so they can prioritize and solve it in a timely manner to make a continuous improvement to the traffic problem.

On the other hand, a group of students from Oakridge International School created a game called Guardians of the Ocean, spreading a message to take care of our oceans, which won the juniors category. The objective of this game is to save the marine species by clearing up most amounts of plastic in a fixed time. This game aims to make children and others aware of how important it is to save the oceans.

There were many other unique ideas that the young coders presented at the Codefest 2019 that includes a web app for Energy Tracking, a website to make Metro Rail travelling easier, an interactive software program which can tackle all kinds of human feelings, an app to assist ambulances in reaching their destinations and more.

The participants had the opportunity to win prizes worth up to 2.2 lakhs and a chance to participate in the Global Public Transport Summit in Stockholm, Sweden sponsored by Y4PT (Youth for Public Transport).

Speaking on this occasion, School Director of Oakridge Bangalore, Amit Jain said, "Objective of Codefest is to give the middle and high school students a taste of the Professional Hackathons. The event helped the kids to connect to the real world issues and shape their ideas to help resolve them.