THE Spanish Court Hotel’s Worthington Conference Centre was the scene last Thursday of an all-day hackathon in which teams of high school and university students competed in web design, app creation, game development and other challenges in observance of International Girls in ICT Day.

Campion College claimed first place in the high school category, winning $50,000 from regional platinum sponsor Scotiabank, $25,000 from local platinum sponsor National Commercial Bank, and Apple Watches from FLOW.Second place went to Manchester High for their cyberbullying website and third place went to American International School of Kingston for the development of an environmental protection and climate change game.In the colleges and universities category, Northern Caribbean University placed first with Quick Alert, an App to report domestic and sexual abuse, Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication was second with a cyberbullying website, and Excelsior Community College, which fielded two teams, placed third.Also, Thursday, the OUR staged its second Girls in ICT Day seminar and exhibition at the Jamaica Pegasus where 100 girls, aged 11-19 from 17 schools across the island, converged for presentations from female ICT entrepreneurs and professionals including Natasha Sampson, chief information officer at Tax Administration Jamaica; OUR’s telecommunications regulatory analysts, Fay Samuels and Nakesha Allen; president and CEO, First Global Bank, Mariame McIntosh Robinson; Navita Anganu of the Inter-American Development Bank; and Dr Leith Dunn, head of Gender Studies and Development at the University of the West Indies.