Tamil Nadu student wins Microsoft Imagine Cup 2010 finals amongst 85000 students across India

From Left To Right -Team Inferno in Blue, Team RSS in White,Mr Moorthy Uppaluri GM, DPE, Microsoft India, G Mahadhavan Nair former chairman ISRO

I was lucky to witness the finals of one of the best technology competition amongst students, Microsoft Imagine cup. I saw some amazing & innovative solutions by 20 years old from across India.

Now in its eighth year, saw more than 85,000 Indian students from colleges across the country register for the competition this year. To give you a background, Microsoft Imagine Cup is a technology competition to encourage young people to apply their imagination, their passion and their creativity to technology innovations that can make a difference in the world – today. Open to students around the world, Imagine Cup is a serious challenge that draws serious talent, and the competition is intense. The contest spans a year where winners go on to attend the global finals held in a different location every year.  The intensity of the work brings students together, and motivates the competitors to give it their all. The bonds formed here often last well beyond the competition itself.

Supreeth S of Team Invisible Ideas from SSN College of Engineering, Chennai, Tamil Nadu emerged as a winner at the India finals of Imagine Cup 2010, the world’s premier student technology competition. Invisible Ideas came up with a unique solution of converting educational content into fun computer games and making the learning process exciting for students, highlighting how technology helps solve the toughest problem of education prevailing in the country. He will now represent India at the world finals in Warsaw, Poland, in July this year. Team RSS from Maharashtra and Team Inferno from Punjab with their innovative projects were judged as the first and second runners-up respectively.

Supreeth S....off to Poland

Here are the details of the innovative solutions that the three teams came up with;

INVISIBLE IDEAS is envisioned to address the problem of low education ratioin India using Microsoft MultiPoint mouse technology by incorporating the educational content in computer games. The solution is a collaborative learning application which consists of entertaining educational games and fun activities. It enables the use of multiple mice on a single computer, allowing all students to learn and play simultaneously. The contents of the application have been developed using the latest Microsoft Multipoint technology. It can be used by up to 4 students simultaneously.

Features of the application:

1. Student Module – has been developed using the Windows Multipoint SDK 1.5 and can be used by up to 4 students simultaneously. The games and activities are:
2. Teacher Module: This is a WPF application that is intended to be used by the teacher. The questions, answers for all the games (Memory game, Fast Math Word Finder) can be added or deleted, and the grid for the Word Finder game can be changed.
3. SQL Server Database: The questions and the answers of all games are stored in the database.
4. Web Service: This is an ASP.NET XML Web Service that is used to retrieve questions from the database as well as add/delete questions.  This is consumed by both the teacher as well as student modules. Therefore the questions can be set by the teacher remotely using her computer and the application on the student computers retrieve data from the server using this web service.

• Paint – Allows all students to draw simultaneously using their individual mice
• Memory Game – It has 12 cards whose contents are hidden. Students have to click on card to open them. The objective is to choose cards that match/have an association to score points. For Example: Barack Obama has to be clubbed with United States of America. Every student gets a turn to play during which time the others’ mouse pointers are disabled. If he/she answers it right, another chance is given otherwise the next student gets the turn.
• Fast Math – It involves answering mathematical questions (whose answer is an integer, eg 12/4*6+2). The answers are shown on balls that pop up and down randomly. Whoever clicks on the right ball (answer) first scores. Both the popping up of the balls as well as the number displayed on it is randomly generated thus ensuring that the same number is not displayed each time in the same place. This game is not turn based and all students play at the same time.
• Word Grid – A set of questions is shown and the answers are in a 6×6 character grid. The answer has to be marked on the grid to score points. This game is not turn based and all students play at the same time. Whoever answers first get the points. Example: If the question is- Which is the largest ocean in the world? , the answer- ’Pacific Ocean’ has to be selected on the grid (it can be anywhere on the grid as long as the boxes containing letters are adjacent).
• Music – It consists of the many musical instruments – Piano, Drum set, Tambourine, Maraca and Triangle. The users can play these by clicking on them (the keys of a keyboard or the top of a drum etc). Every note that is played is accurate and generated from samples of real instruments. The instruments can be played simultaneously. (For example: When one kid plays the piano the other can play the drums etc). They can play the same instruments as well since each mouse is individually identified.

TEAM INFERNO comprising of four students and a mentor from University College of Engineering, Punjab University – Harpreet Singh Sareen, Amanjot Singh, Gursimran Singh Sahota, Shallu Sarvari and Sukhjot Singh will showcase their project Prakash ESP (Educational Software Package) in the Software Design category. Prakash ESP is envisioned towards achieving universal primary education and making it more accessible to students through the means of technology. The project consists of softwares catering to the learning competencies as well as reading, writing, and listening skills of primary school children. It makes use of latest technological concepts in order to provide easy to use applications that will help accelerate individual learning, keep children engaged and make it more effective than traditional learning. The project also leverages MultiPoint Mouse technology to encourage competition and collaboration amongst students. Using these features, the user is able to interact with the application with ease. Since the application is designed specifically considering physically challenged users, it makes minimal use of mouse/keyboard particularly for the blind and users with hindrance in eyesight and motor disabilities.

TEAM RSS – With 70% Indian population residing in the rural areas and parallel statistics in other developing and underdeveloped nations, current health services leave the village population helpless with their troubles owing to their availability at longer distances from homes, slow nature, improper management and unaffordable costs. Team RSS, Roma Kalani, Shailesh Lohia, Sneha Ledwani from VESIT, Chembur, Mumbai University have come up with a unique application. The application aims to provide immediate, affordable and local medical assistance to the needy and poor, using portable medical devices, a few essential parameters and service virtualization. They have tried to build an Integrated and Interconnected Primary Health Services Units’ (PHSU) System for a nation, flanked by the concept of Service Virtualization – a new paradigm in the offering of domain specific services seamlessly. These PHSUs are basically kiosks bearing portable/wearable planned medical equipments and provided with strong communication services to ensure medical information is transmitted effectively wherever needed. The solution envisages providing primary health services to the people of a country, especially living in the interiors, with effective delivery of assistance, standard diagnostic facilities and timely delivery of treatment using technology. Primary health centers can be setup across the state, each of such unit equipped with basic health facilities and manned by trained manpower (paramedical personnel). These units will offer a few basic facilities (like primary medicine, diagnostics etc.) to patients in need.

All the best to SUPREETH and let’s hope he rocks Poland too 🙂