An eighth grade student, Haris Kadic, from Beehive Science and Technology Academy charter school, is one of 19 national winners in the 2016 Globey Game Design Competition and Awards. Kadic and his former classmate, Jenna Riddle, were the only two Utahns to be among the 47 national finalists in the competition.
The two students traveled to Austin, Texas for the final competition and awards ceremony at the Texas State Capitol on Sept. 24.
The Globey awards are sponsored by Globaloria, a provider of computer science education programs for students in kindergarten through grade 12.
This year marks the ninth year of the Globeys. According to Globaloria, 14,468 students in 15 states competed for the 2016 Globey awards. Any students who have taken Globaloria computer science courses were eligible to compete. To make the final round of 47, the two Beehive students competed against 274 regional finalists.
Kadic and Riddle were both finalists in the ActionScript programming category (there were a total of nine categories). Kadic’s project is named “Crazy Kitchen” and Riddle’s is “Ocean Madness.”
Kadic said, “My game is about how much still good food is thrown away. To play ‘Crazy Kitchen,’ you need to find nine objects. The objects are the food that you could put somewhere so they won’t go bad, and the game tells you how to save that food. I used Adobe Flash Professional software to make the game.”
According to a news release from Globaloria, “With a mission to train teachers how to integrate computer science education into K-12 curriculum and enhance students’ skills through standard-aligned game design and coding courses, Globaloria created the Globeys to recognize outstanding achievement in computational fluency, engineering, coding, teamwork and design thinking.”
Hanifi Oguz, principal of Beehive Science and Technology Academy, said, “We’re extremely proud of Haris and Jenna for their recent honor. Their accomplishment is a reflection of their creativity and hard work, along with the efforts of our talented and caring faculty. It’s because of achievements like this that Beehive Science and Technology Academy was recently named as Utah Charter School of the Year by the Utah Association of Public Charter Schools.”
