The New Technology Division of the Institute of National Remembrance has selected the winning challenge team for HackYeah!

During two days of challenges and programming, representatives of the New Technology Division of the Institute of National Remembrance, which is a partner of this largest gathering of programmers in Europe, attended the event for the second time.

The New Technology Division of the Institute of National Remembrance prepared a special task for programmers to create a quiz generator based on historical articles published on the Institute’s websites. The solution is intended for teachers of history, as well as history and modern times and social studies teachers. The prize pool for the winners of the competition was PLN 30,000.

During the two-day event taking place on 19-20 November at the Tauron Arena in Kraków, 4 VR stations were prepared for hackathon participants with the “Cyphers Game”, a gaming project of the New Technology Division of the Institute of National Remembrance. It is a game telling the story of the struggles of Polish cryptologists during the Polish-Bolshevik war. The game has previously been showcased at the Pax East and Pax West gaming fairs in Boston and Seattle. It has recently been included in the list of teaching materials recommended by the Ministry of Education and Science.

Magdalena Hajduk – Director of the New Technology Division of the Institute of National Remembrance – highlighted the creative nature of the task:

–The Institute of National Remembrance publishes very valuable historical content on the websites it operates, which is an important addition to the knowledge of Polish and world history of the 20th century. This content can form the basis for actively educating people about history using new technologies. All we need to do is implement artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions. This will provide teachers with the opportunity to create innovative history quizzes to aid learning about history.

As she added:

– One can see the potential for combining new technologies and the school educational process in a report published by the New Technology Division on pathways in immersive history education. Dialogue with young people and responsiveness is key.

As Adrianna Paradowska – deputy director of the Technology Division of the Institute of National Remembrance – highlighted, new information technologies offer almost unlimited possibilities for supporting the teaching process, in a form that is attractive to young audiences. As a result, students will be more willing to access historical texts presented online and become familiar with them more quickly.

The judges for the competition were representatives of: New Technology Division, IT Office and Office of the Spokesperson of the Institute of National Remembrance.

The winners of the task prepared by the New Technology Division were the Team localhost 2022, who prepared “Internetowy Pomocnik Nauczyciela” (“Online Teacher’s Assistant”), a quiz generator for teachers and students. The winning team received a cheque for PLN 20,000.

Second place went to the Alergeekventures team who received a prize of  PLN 10,000. The jury also awarded an honourable mention to a young team of students from an IT secondary technical school in Szczecin competing under the name of Towarzystwo Filamentów (Filament Society).

The winning solution will be implemented and available free of charge online for teachers on the website of the Institute of National Remembrance.