JKUAT Shines at the Nokia QT 2012 Hackathon

Jomo Kenyatta University students emerged tops in the Nokia QT Hackathon competition that ended in Nairobi, Sunday June 24 2012.  Mike Kivuvia , a Third Year Computer Technology student developed an  application, SkinSwap, which allows one to theme (phone background look and feel) own phone based on themes (background images) of various wild animals. He walked away with KSh. 1,000,000.

Matu Jotham, a Third Year Information Technology student, came in third with his application Quickdrums, a musical beat sequencing that helps users create musical beats.

Other innovations developed by JKUAT students that were among the top 13 winners included MyBike, a sporting application that allows cyclists to monitor speed while History Management and PeopleAround, combines Foursquare and Facebook features to  help one see ‘which of your friends are near to you’. Read more…

Endeavour graduate wins HUAWEI Android challenge

Abel Masai receiving his award (second from right)

Masai Abel Jevayi emerged top in the just concluded Huawei Android Application Challenge , an initiative aimed at promoting the culture of science and innovation among university students in Kenya that was jointly organized by Huawei Technologies, Safaricom Limited and three local Universities – Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture, University of Nairobi and Moi University.

Jevayi was declared the overall winner in a competition that had attracted 80 students drawn from the three participating universities for developing an a mobile telephone application software – KaroPay; that can allow students and parents to pay fees through their mobile phones. The winning software said to have greatly impressed panelists drawn from Huawei Technologies, Safaricom, Kenya ICT Board and the Ministry of Higher Education operates on mobile money transfer schemes either Java or Android platforms through MPESA, Airtel Money, Yu Cash among others.

Related stories
JKUAT Students tops in national ICT challenge
HUAWEI Awards Android Application Challenge Winners

Students stage a successful Tech Expo

 

Who’s Smarter Now?: Mr. Eric Omwando Opiyo receives an award from VC Prof. Imbuga after his Online and SMS Fuel Prices Monitoring System emerged tops during the maiden Tech Expo.

 

Students pursuing various degree programmes displayed an amazing wide range of innovations during the first Technology Expo to be held at the University, a pointer to the goldmine that is the creative talent among students.

The 2010 JKUAT Tech expo was held on October 13, 2010 at the JKUAT main campus. The event was graced by guests from the industry. Among the guests present was Kaburo Kobia from the Kenya ICT Board, Mr. Pius Busera from Safaricom Ltd. The University had in attendance, the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Mabel Imbuga, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Prof.  Esther Kahangi, the University-Industry Liaison Officer, Eng. Benson Kariuki and the University ICT Director, Dr. Joseph Wafula.

JKUAT Endeavour Open Day 18th September 2010

College Feed Group presenting their project

This year’s open day for JKUAT Endeavour was held on September 18, 2010 at JKUAT main campus. The day marked the end of the Web Application Development Course that was held in the month of June – July 2010. The event started with opening remarks from Dr. Waweru Mwangi, Director Institute of Computer Science and Information Technology – JKUAT. He thanked the organizers of the event, the students and the guest judges who spared their time to participate in the event. He put emphasis on the issue of support and continuity of projects after prototypes had been developed. He emphasized the importance of universities creating linkages with the industry.  Participants were encouraged with the fact that most web inventions were initiated by students in class. The web is supposed to be interactive, a concept that has now taken root in the social web.

Guest lectures were delivered by:
1.    Web 2.0 and social media – Alex Mwaura
2.    Do it different – Samuel Kamochu
3.    Freelancing and mobile application development – Solomon Kariri
4.    Web applications – Mark Mwongela
5.    Google maps – Jeremiah Kamau

Student groups presented their projects before a panel of judges composed of Mark Mwongela (Verviant), Samuel Kamochu (Safaricom), Alex Mwaura (Creative Edge) and Andrew Ketoyo (Creative Edge). Winners were announced at the end of the competition. The winning group was College Feed. The team presented a social media web application integrating Google maps to display event venues. The runners up were the Jazika group with a web application for sellers and buyers of second products. The second runners up were the Online Academy group with an application for helping students revise for examinations.

Update on Endeavour

We have been quiet for a while, but a lot has been happening. The Web Application Development (June 2010) to second year students started a week ago with a class size of 29. There are 10 students from BSc. Computer Science, 9 students from BSc. Computer Technology  and 10 from BSc. Information Technology class. All the students are in their second year of study.  The students attending the training are really enthused and ready to learn, amazingly skipping world cup matches to attend the training  . We have some guest students from Mt. Kenya University and MSc. Software Engineering who are participating in the ongoing training.

Students attending a training session

There are two courses being conducted by three Endeavour graduates (Abel Masai, Kennedy Kirui and Edward Omondi).

• Mobile application development course (conducted on Mondays and Thursdays). The class comprises of BSc. Computer Technology students in their third year of study.

• Web application development course (conducted on Saturdays).The class size is 18 students from the BSc. Information Technology and one student from Bachelor of Architecture.

Roundup on JKUAT Endeavour graduates course

Students in one of the sessions

Saturday 27^th was the last day of the JKUAT Endeavor, IT class. All the other weeks sailed smoothly as we didn’t encounter any problems; the students came on time most of the days and no technical hitch came up.

The Information pull class was a topic of interest as most of the students didn’t know that with Java you could create applications based on information from websites without having to talk to the owners to give you access to their database. The lab for this class was a bit challenging; it involved pulling information from a weather forecast site and formatting it such that it could later be send as a text message. So far the students are still trying to figure out the best way to do it.

The SMS class was well received and the students were impressed by the simplicity of creating such applications. A live demonstration was done; the students send a SMS requesting for quotes with the keyword being the individual you want a quote from. Nearly all the students tried it out and they can attest that it really worked. The challenge was now for the students to come up with applications which solve real world problems as the demonstration used was a simple application.

New course by JKUAT Endeavour graduates

Following the success of the first JKUAT Endeavor program which involved a course in mobile application development in Java some IT under students under the umbrella of Jkuat Linux Users Group (JLUG) teamed up and approached some students of the first endeavor program. The students approached were Omondi Ochieng, Kirui Kennedy and Masai Abel. Their request was that they too needed to learn the same as they had missed out in the first endeavor program. The class is made up of around 20 students all from the IT department.

The course is to last for six weeks, one session every Saturday. The first lesson under this program kicked off on 20^th February this year. The course introduction was done by Kirui. It covered the various aspects of mobile telephony, its associated technologies and the available market for mobile applications. The course curriculum was also discussed and the goals to be achieved were laid down. The first lab was then given to the students in order to gauge their programming capabilities. Since the available time is limited the students were divided into groups and advised to start thinking of possible projects as early as possible.

Web Application Development Course: Day 7 & 8.

We checked on what the students had done on the previous lab which was to design a simple JavaScript Calculator Application. Andrew showed the students concepts on jQuery and took them through the various selector functions. Then, they were taken through the  jQuery Lightbox and a simple jQuery powered image slideshow. The students were given a demo site incorporating the above jQuery plugins and concepts to experiment on.

Then they were introduced to PHP – variables, arrays, associative arrays and multi-dimensional arrays. The students were further taken through strings, control structures, date and time functions in PHP with sample codes to compliment the lectures. They were given a lab to create a PHP script that displays greeting message based on the time of the day.

Web Application Development Course: Week 2

The week began well, despite it being a monday and on the 15th of February.  We arrived in the lab for the lecture on JavaScript. Andrew took the students through HTML Forms, form elements and JavaScript – variables, retrieving values from a form. Students were given a lab to design a simple calculator based on JavaScript. The class size was 83. We were joined by students from the IT department.

Web Application Development Course: Day 4 & 5.

Day four lecture was on HTML and CSS Part II. Students were taken through styling for the header menu, side menus and footer menus of a web page.

Day five lecture was on photo editing for the web. Students were taken through various ways of editing a photo to achieve desired effects – shadow effect, changing a coloured photo into black/white, modifying sections of a photo.