Over 200 students, educators and parents attended the first annual Maine Digital Festival on Saturday, December 13. They worked with MIT coaches, listened to presenters, and participated in an Hour of Code. The event was held in conjunction with the Maine FIRST Lego League Championship at the Augusta Civic Center.
Staff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were on hand giving workshops on their interactive coding programs, MIT AppInventor and StarLogo Nova. Volunteers from local universities and educational organizations hosted an open Hour of Code Lab where over 100 students and parents tried an Hour of Code exercise during the course of the day.
The results of the event were extremely positive with over 94% of participants indicating that they would recommend attending the 2015 Maine Digital Festival to a friend and an 57% of the participants said they were more interested in digital technology careers as a result of the festival.
Tyler Technologies took the stage at noon to announce the 2015 Maine App Challenge for high school students. Student teams will have a chance to compete for $10,000 dollars in scholarship funds and winners will be announced at the 2015 Maine Digital Festival. For more information visit: http://maineappchallenge.org/challenges/tyler/
