Students go high-tech

A hall full of 16 to 18-year-olds engaged in explaining their IT projects to a crowd of guests huddling closer to hear them amidst the sounds of music and announcements — that was the scene that greeted a visitor to the recently held Information Technology Exhibition (ITEX) held at the Emirates International School (EIS) in Dubai.

ITEX 2005 was the first IT exhibition held by EIS, coinciding with GITEX (Gulf Information Technology Exhibition) celebrating its 25th anniversary that year.

"The resonant success of ITEX 2005, which witnessed over 3,500 visitors has encouraged the students and the school to host another exhibition this year. We hope to make this an annual event and look forward to more schools in Dubai joining forces with us to make this an even bigger success," says Manoj Nicholas, head of the IT department.

The projects on display

Sixteen projects were on display. Except for two from Cambridge International School and the Sharjah American International School, all were the handiwork of EIS students.

Abdul Qader, Ebrahim and friends showcased podcasting — the process by which a series of digital media files are distributed over the internet for playback on portable media players or personal computers.

"We took a video of our teacher teaching in class and then posted it on our website. Any user can download it, save it and watch it on their PCs or their iPods at their convenience. Such videos are particularly useful when a student has missed class; but the downside is that some students may feel more inclined to stay at home," the boys explained.

A show of chips

The Core II Duo, the latest CPU (Central Processing Unit) chip from Intel was on display at another exhibit.

"The chip has high processing power but very low consumption of energy. It is also 40 per cent faster than its predecessors and that much more efficient and good for gaming and graphics," said Zaid who had exhibited a CPU that he had assembled in which he had used the Core II extreme Duo chip.

The Intel VIIV, that is a combination of hardware and software integrated in television sets, was also on display.

A monster on screen

Mohammad Salman showed CD modelling using programmes that are used in the entertainment industry for special effects in movies and games. It can be used in architecture.

"I made the Emirates Towers and Shangri-La Hotel on my PC using these programmes. I also used Maya software to make a monster on screen. It is possible because they are all made using polygons," he said.

Face mapping

Ajith Prasad and Justin Brooks were displaying a technique called face mapping where they took the photo of visitors or any of their friends, cut their faces off and pasted them onto one of the many photos of celebrities already displayed there, and then created effects around it.

"It has been quite popular with visitors and we have had more than 60 people agreeing to be featured here," said Prasad.

Some more projects

While Omar and friends created a project using visual basic maths calculations, Ahmad Al Rais and friends had put together an excellent PowerPoint presentation on a big screen showing "Dubai — the past, present and future".

Another project explained with models and wires how networking was done.

Skinning

Momin Sherazi exhibited a project on Skinning, which is the ability to change and customise the desktop of a computer screen to suit personal tastes. The boys added many handy features called widgets and incorporated different effects to make it more interesting.

Marcel Beck described computers of various types to visitors. Harshad and his friend explained how computer games are made through a simple game J Pong that they had created.

Michael, Hibar, Oliver and Shafeeq came together to show how music is made and recorded at a studio using computers and relevant software.

In a project from the Cambridge International School (CIS), Andrea had designed a database to manage books in a library. The programme allowed the user to view records of the status of each book in the library or search for a particular book or even see which book had been lent to a student or teacher.

M. Fernandez, the teacher who accompanied her students from CIS, echoed the sentiments of several visitors: "I think the students of EIS and ours have done a fabulous job at ITEX. They have been very innovative and being part of such an event is going to benefit them a lot in future. I hope ITEX becomes an annual feature and more schools come to participate in it."

"Having various exhibitors during ITEX help students get more exposure to the latest in the IT field. My IT department and the students put in a lot of effort to make this event happen. I am also extremely thankful to our sponsors and supporters," said Manoj Nicholas.

IT company GBM gifted two Lenovo laptops to winners of an internal raffle.