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08-09 Young Broadband Comp

Students from the Gael Coláiste Luimnigh, Sr. Harry’s Mall, at the announcement by Shannon Development of its new 2008/09 Young Broadband Content Designer Competition. Pictured (from left standing) are; Eugene Brennan, Development and Marketing Director, Shannon Development, Ciara Ní Dhrisceoil, Teacher at Gael Coláiste Luimnigh, Gina O' Connor ICT Advisor Limerick Education Centre, and Seamus Toomey Director, Limerick Education Centre. Front row from left Sarah Sheahan and Andrew Ó Gairnéir, students from Geal Coláiste Luimnigh.

 

Shannon Development is calling on young budding computer enthusiasts to enter a new competition to undertake a broadband content design project linked to school learning activities and suitable for uploading to the Internet. The Competition is open to all secondary schools in the Shannon Region.

The 2008/09 Young Broadband Content Designer Competition has been developed by Shannon Development in association with Shannon Broadband and local Education Centres around the Shannon Region.

“With all the new broadband infrastructure which has just come on-stream in towns around the Shannon Region we wanted to create a competition which would showcase the many uses of high bandwidth. We hope to do this by getting secondary school students to demonstrate practical applications of this new technology. We want the students to come up with a range of interesting broadband content projects which would have benefits for local communities and be stored for posterity as high tech digital records,” says Eugene Brennan, Development and Marketing Director, Shannon Development.

A number of themes have been identified for the Competition including ‘live, learn, work and play’. Participants can use a variety of medium including video, 3D animation, images, sound files, text, HTML, and 3D modelling.

“This Competition is a natural progression for Shannon Development. As part of its commitment to the development of broadband in the Shannon Region, Shannon Broadband Ltd, a public sector consortium led by Shannon Development, in partnership with the regions’ local authorities and supported by the Department of Communications, has completed a €12 million project involving the laying of 52kms of a network of fibre optic cable in eight Shannon Region,” said Mr. Kevin Thompstone, chief executive, Shannon Development.

“We have already completed the laying of over 57kms of fibre optic cable in Limerick City in phase one of the project at a cost of €6.5 million, bringing total investment in broadband infrastructure to-date in the Shannon Region to over €18 million. The presence of cable will make it highly attractive and feasible for licensed operators to offer the latest broadband services to businesses, commercial interests, public services, local communities and domestic users. Ensuring fast, cost effective broadband services is key to attracting inward investment and creating more jobs in the future,” said Mr. Thompstone.

Project proposals for the Young Broadband Designer Competition need to be with Shannon Development by close of business on 19th September ’08.  A judging panel will then select 12 to 16 secondary school projects and each of these successful projects will then be eligible for a special grant support of up to €500. This funding can go towards equipment to needed to complete their project such as digital camera, audio recording equipment, video-editing suites, animations studios, CAD (computer aided design), multimedia production suites etc.

“We are seeing more and more younger entrepreneurs showing real talent in the computer area and this is something Shannon Development wants to encourage and foster. The people of the Shannon Region are some of Ireland’s best entrepreneurs and they can and are competing successfully on the world stage,” said Mr. Thompstone added.

Among the Competition criteria is a requirement to be innovative and include features that exploit and demonstrate the benefits of high bandwidth. Projects must be original and produce a resource that can be seen or used by others in the region or that provides a model which can be extended or adapted by others.

All participants will be notified of the results by the end of September and an introductory workshop for successful schools will run in September’08.  Completed project submissions needs to be with Shannon Development by February ‘09 and the winners will be announced at a special ceremony in March ’09. A special exhibition of the successful entries will be organised for March ’09 details to be confirmed.

Information packs on the Competition are available from Gina O’ Connor ICT (Information Communications Technology) Advisor at Limerick Education Centre Tel: 061-312360; Jim Enright ICT Advisor Laois Education Centre Tel: 057-8672400 or Bríd Talty ICT Advisor Clare Education Centre Tel: 065-6845500.