Pushing coding: Lim said there is a lack of awareness of coding at school level.
Students need to start coding young as we need more talents moving forward, said Eduspec Holdings Bhd chief executive officer EH Lim.
“There is a lack of awareness if coding at school level, where education actually restricts the students’ creativity,” he said at the launch of Eduspec’s Digital Campus 2015.
Digital Campus, now in its second year, is an ICT competition that aims to develop student creativity through digital education.
“Digital Campus 2015 opens up more opportunities for youths regardless of where they come from. It is our aim to spread digital knowledge,” said Lim.
This year, the competition, which focuses on coding, robotics and digital art and animation, is aiming for a larger talent pool by expanding into Indonesia and Vietnam.
“We intend to expand to other Asean countries as we believe that all youths have to think digitally to better their world. And we thought what better way to do that than by opening it up to neighbouring countries?” said Lim.
Eduspec is targeting more than 1,000 participants for Digital Campus this year and about 300 entries for the coding competition.
All three competitions – the WeCode coding contest, International Robothon robotics challenge and the Digital Art and Animation contest – are open to primary and secondary students.
The coding contest challenges students to create their own original content such as mobile games, entertainment apps or animation programs.
The robotics challenge requires students to build and program a robot which can perform real-world tasks to aid engineers.
The other contest involves digital art and animation. Primary students will compete to create an art piece based on Life In The 23rd century theme while the secondary student category revolves around the Fantasy World theme.
The finals for the Digital Art and Animation will be held in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Nov 8 followed by the International Robothon in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, on Nov 29 and WeCode in Kuala Lumpur on Dec 6.
Youth On Unity, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the social, educational and physical development of young Malaysians is one of the partners for Digital Campus 2015, alongside the Education Ministry and CyberSecurity Malaysia.
For more information on the contests and registration, visit www.eduplay.com.my and www.gromsocial.com/eduplay.
