On the 12th December students from Aspire, Montgomery and Unity high schools tested their IT skills at a ‘hackathon’ event at Blackpool Sixth.

The 28 students split into teams of four to complete challenges around computer skills. The teams had to compete across three areas: a MIT app developer challenge designing an app for pastels; a Gamemaker challenge to design a Christmas themed computer game; or a HTML website challenge, designing a website hosting the most popular Christmas toys of the year.

Chelsie Toole, IT teacher, said “In their teams, they had to decide whether to complete one challenge to a very good standard or split their skills across different challenges.”

The winning teams for each challenge were: Gamemaker challenge - Montgomery High school students Matthew, Sam, Theo and Daniel; The MIT app developer - Unity Academy students Corey, Lewis, Bailey and Christian; and the HTML challenge - Aspire Academy students Kyle, Alexandra, Ben and Eloy.

Aspire Academy students Nathan, Jamie, Michael and Thomas were also highly commended for their fantastic teamwork and enthusiasm in completing the tasks.

Blackpool Sixth teacher Chelsie added: “We were thrilled with the work that students from the high schools created.

“They all worked so well as teams and developed their IT and computing skills in the sessions.”