Technovation Students Raise the Bar (again)

Technovation is a global competition where groups of up to 5 girls create a business plan around a mobile device application, which they will program themselves. In April, they will make a Dragon’s Den style venture pitch in front of a panel of judges at the regional competition and hopefully move onto the provincial tournament.

Last year, the Technovation students raised the bar by employing the use of a SQL database. We used App Inventor, which is the recommended platform that Technovation suggests. Within App Inventor is a light-weight, built-in database. But when presented the choice, our students wanted to use a real SQL database (which we hosted on our own server), even though it was only worth one point. We knew that if we didn’t manage to get the SQL database working with our mobile application, we still had an app to show.

No so this year.

The Technovation students this year really wanted to make a video game. App Inventor is more of a learning tool: no one really uses it to make a “real” mobile application. So we decided to use Unity 3D game engine, which is a professional grade cross-platform tool that uses C# language and object oriented programming. The problem with Unity 3D engine is that, as a professional tool, it employs advanced computer science techniques such as extending class libraries and overriding methods and behaviors, using property / variable and object / reference scope. The challenge for our students is an extraordinarily steep learning curve. And, unlike last year where using the database was optional, we don’t have a mobile application if they do not learn Unity or C# fast enough.

I am proud to announce that they have a working mobile application that they created in Unity 3D engine and C#! Our thanks is owed to Yiting Zhang, our parent mentor for technology, who has helped along the way. The mobile app remains a little rough around the edges and there is still a lot of work to do, but it works! The Technovation team has also been exercising entrepreneurial thinking as they work wth Julius Michael, our adult business mentor, who is guiding them in making a business plan.

Wish us luck, we compete in April!