Students Aisling Dwyer, Katya Lawlor and Grace Childs from The Teresian School in Donnybrook, Dublin 4, help launch the new visitor app for the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition
To coincide with the start of the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition at the RDS in Dublin this week, a new web app will aim to help visitors navigate the exhibits more easily.
Participants on the Digital Skills Academy’s WebElevate programme worked with BT to develop the web app for the young scientist exhibition. The WebElevate course re-skills graduate job seekers with digital technology skills.
As for the app, it has been designed to work on most mobile devices and tablets to help people navigate the RDS this week and take in the 550 exhibits from students, as well as the live shows. Such shows will include ‘The World of Robots’, featuring 100kg robots, and ‘It Takes Guts’, an interactive exhibit organised by Science Museum London that will cover food and digestion.
Coding club CoderDojo will also have a stand in the RDS to teach people the fundamentals of programming via interactive demos.
Features of the app include interactive maps, entertainment listings, an event timetable, as well as the ability to search students’ projects by title, county and school.
BT Ireland’s online and social media manager Larry Taylor said the idea was to come up with an app to help visitors get the best experience from their trips to the exhibition to take in as many projects as possible.
The science exhibition itself will be open to the public from Thursday and will run until Saturday at the RDS.
BT is anticipating that the event will attract more than 45,000 visitors who will check out the science and technology projects from students around Ireland.
Today, students from Dublin are setting up their projects in the main hall of the RDS arena, while tomorrow students from the rest of the country are set to set up their exhibition spaces.
Almost 4,200 students entered the awards this year, with entries in the technology category having increased by 24pc since the 2012 contest.
