Two Crawford College matriculants achieved the unimaginable at the eighth e-ICON World Contest in Hawaii, US last month.
Laolu Ayo-Yusuf (18) and Saien Naidoo (17) placed second in the e-learning International Contest of Outstanding New Ages for their maths learning mobile app, Veda – now available on the App Store.
Saien and Loalu along with their Indonesian teammates had to develop an app to further the UN Sustainable Development Goals, a funding proposal, promotional video to market the app and slide presentation to show how it could impact society.
WATCH:
They made their presentation to a panel of judges and fellow contestants on the first day of the 25 to 29 June contest.
The duo spoke to Rekord about their experience and how proud they were of their achievement.
“We prepared in advance before leaving South Africa – fine-tuning our project proposal, developing the app and preparing for the pitch,” they said.
Saien and Laolu said they were the only African participants.
“We could challenge ourselves and test our competency in IT against the rest of the world. It is a platform that created great exposure for us on a world stage and it gave us an opportunity to work in a global team to accomplish one common goal,” they said adding their partnership with Indonesians had presented other difficulties.
“The language and time zone barriers made communicating quite difficult.”
The said the app was still being improved to align it to the school syllabus.
“It was developed for beginners.”
Saien and Laolu won a pair of Beats Solo 3 Wireless headphones and GoPro Hero 2018 camera including accessories.
Do you have more information about the story? Please send us an email to editorial@rekord.co.za or phone us on 083 625 4114.
For free breaking and community news, visit Rekord’s websites:
For more news and interesting articles, like Rekord on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or Instagram
