David and James (front row) pictured at the competition in Dublin
Following their success in Ireland’s first Imagine Cup in 2007, two students: David Gibson
and James Shiels, from the School of Computing and Information Engineering, Coleraine,
have confirmed placement jobs within Microsoft, Dublin in 2008-09. This will be the third
year of their respective programmes in BSc (Hons) Computing and BSc (Hons) Computing
(Digital Games Development).
David, from Ballynahinch, and James, from Magherafelt were part of a University team that gained 2nd place in the competition held earlier this year. Their project, the ‘Fun Phonics Game’ is a prototype educational game designed to help primary school children learn to read using Linguistics Phonics. The team gathered information from the Belfast Educational and Library Board (BELB) and worked with a local school, Ballykelly Primary, to evaluate their approach. Funding is currently being sought to turn the prototype game into a tool to aid the use of the Phonics scheme in other schools.
Dr Michaela Black, who gave academic support to the successful team, says “The Imagine Cup event was very valuable for David and James, introducing them to real business situations and exposing them to the experience of developing and presenting a product to a panel of experts. This helped make them become aware of the expectations of industry and understand how best to present their own case in a job interview, contributing to their successful placement appointments with Microsoft.”
For further information on this story, please contact:
Dr Michaela Black
