BETA Hack 2023

Hack the Culture

Theme: Bahamas History and Culture – Celebrating 50 years of Excellence

BETA Hack is back! We’re excited to reintroduce schools and students to one of our most exciting and innovative programs. This year’s hackathon has been improved and revamped to incorporate a 4-week design sprint. Students will be tasked to solve a specific problem surrounding technology integration into historical Bahamian processes, vital cultural issues such as Junkanoo, historical artifacts and museums, public data and decision making as well as environmental sustainability just to name a few.

As part of this year’s program, we’ve invited community organizations and government agencies to serve as user advocates that will help students to hone in on the key challenges/issues surrounding the areas listed above. Advocates will aid students in properly identifying the problems, developing viable solutions, and testing out their solutions for feasibility and adoption. BETA team members will serve as Tech Mentors providing weekly check-ins and technical workshops to equip students with the tools to develop their prototypes.

BETA Hack 2023 Summary

Theme Bahamian History and Culture

When February 25th – March 18th

Target Audiences

Students Teams (3-4 per team), Grades 7 – 12 Junior and Senior Divisions

Target # of Teams 25

Task

Can student teams develop a technology-based solution to a relevant Bahamian issue?

Hackathon Learning Objectives & Outcomes

• Students should want to keep learning and practicing computing after the hackathon and experiencing the joy of ideation, problem solving and invention

• Students should leave with the confidence, computational thinking skills, and practices necessary to succeed in future learning and problem-solving in computing and non-computing contexts.

• Students demonstrate in-depth understanding of the larger and root-cause problem and solution progress in the form of a partial implementation.

Our strategic focus for this year’s hackathon is to maximize three core tenets:

Students use skill-level appropriate, real-world problem-solving frameworks and development tools to create minimum viable products.

Technical Skill Development

Students are engaged and excited during the activities, via continued workshop attendance, inquiry focused sessions and reviews.

Fun and Engagement

Community Impact

Students submit small semi-tofully functional minimum viable products that solve user advocates’ “low-hanging fruit” problems partially or fully.