The second annual Kodu Kup competition came to a close last Thursday with the final taking place at Microsoft’s Reading offices.
The competition brought together twelve teams, representing ten schools from around the UK, to compete for the coveted title of ‘Kodu Kup Champions’. There were six overall winning teams, with Uppingham Community College crowned overall champions.
With the new Computing curriculum rolling out for all 5-16 year olds across UK primary and secondary schools this September, Microsoft remains committed to encouraging more young people to study computer science and providing teachers with the right tools, resources and training to inspire the next generation of computer scientists. Understanding the complexity of Coding and Computer Science, the Kodu Kup aims to make the subject engaging, creative and stimulating for young people and, crucially, demonstrates that anyone can code.
Launched last year, the Kodu Kup is an exciting competition challenging young children to develop their own computer games, using Kodu, a visual language designed specifically by Microsoft. The competition is open to UK school children aged between seven and fourteen, and its goal is to inspire them about the world of computing.
This year’s winners, three boys from Uppingham Community College, were crowned the Kodu Kup champions for their imaginative and detailed Evil Robot game, which saw users having to complete a series of tests and levels in order to progress. Judges were impressed with the students’ compelling back story, future development and business plan which included merchandise, future consoles and gift vouchers. The team even devised a song for their presentation which would later be the theme tune for the game and had thought about future development on other platforms using software such as TouchDevelop.
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| This year’s winners – Uppingham Community College
July 22, 2014 |
The winners will go on to compete in the newly created Kodu Kup Europe taking place in Brussels in October 2014.
The Kodu programme itself is already widely used by teachers in schools across the UK. So far the programme has proved an effective tool to deliver basic programming and problem solving skills to 380,000 pupils in the UK. This is part of Microsoft’s long term ambition to ensure that every school leaver in the UK is computationally literate and that 80% of all jobs requiring computer science knowledge are able to be filled by a UK graduate by 2025.
The games created by all twelve of the Kodu Kup finalists will be available shortly on the Kodu Game Lab site for you to download and try for yourselves! http://www.kodugamelab.com/
