The App Challenge Competition provides support for creative school students to improve their skills in designing and developing apps and games.
Vision
The App Challenge was launched in 2011 for the purpose of improving students’ innovation skills and building their capabilities in the field of designing and developing apps and games for smart devices, also, to introduce them to the gaming industry. The competition targets students from public and private schools in all governorates who are 14-16 years old.
Objectives
- Develop innovation and creativity among school students and introduce them to the apps and gaming industry.
- Build capabilities of school students in the field of designing and developing apps and games for smart devices.
- Improve professional skills for school students, including time management, teamwork and the ability to work pressure.
- Adopt modern electronic technologies to create a creative young generation capable of enhancing Jordan's position in the field of information technology.
- Promote Jordan through the use of modern technology means and tools.
The competition consists of four main stages
First stage: School students are invited to attend an orientation day, through which, the gaming industry and its development stages are briefed. On that day, students will sit for a quiz leading to a list of participating schools in the competition.
Second stage: Students from the selected schools will be trained for five days on games development and design.
Third stage: This stage extends to one and a half month, during which, students will implement what they have learned. In the end, each group of students should submit their app/game to be assessed by a technical committee according to criteria related to content and information, creativity in design, technical assessment and user-friendliness.
Fourth stage: Winning teams, representing the three regions of the Kingdom, will be awarded prizes, in addition to a $5,000 present to the schools for the purpose of IT development and creation of a mini gaming lab within each school. Winning apps/games will be promoted as well.
Participation
Students between 14 and 16 years old who are nominated through their schools and eligible to participate in the competition, where Public and private schools nominated by the Ministry of Education or related institutions will be invited to attend the orientation days held in all three regions in the Kingdom to select participating schools to join the training courses
Accomplishments
The competition ran for ten rounds so far, and they are as the following:
First cycle: titled "Tourism in Jordan"; the cycle started in May 2011 and Amman National School team won the first prize for their determination application "Jordan-In-n-Out".
Second and third cycles: Where Sama High school for girls won first prize for their app “Fashion-Jo” while al Ahliyah School for Girls also won for their app “Jordan Unearthed”. The results of the third cycle were announced during the closing ceremony in June 2012 under the patronage of His Majesty King Abdullah II, in which “Herb farm”; and application developed by Jameel Bin Shaker School for boys, and “Wrinkle Shrinker” which was developed by Amman National School won the first place. The Jameel Bin Shaker School developed several apps after enrolling in the training sessions conducted by the Jordan Gaming Lab.
Fourth and fifth cycles: titled "Civilizations in Jordan"; the cycle started in December 2013 where the Wadi Musa School for Boys won the first place for their application "The Arabian Revolution". The results of the fifth cycle were announced during the MENA ICT Forum, which was held on October 13th in 2014, in which PrincessBasma Secondary School for Girls in Madaba won the first place for their application "JARASA"
The Golden Cycle: titled "edutainment", where an introductory day was held for all the schools that have already participated in the training program for the competition in previous cycles. The Jubilee School won the first place for their application of "CellViver" while the Umm Kulthum School for Girls won first prize for the design of their application "The Hidden Treasure". The results were announced at the 4th Gaming Summit on November 23rd, 2014.
The 6th and 7th cycle were held under the theme "Edutainment" and results where students of Fatima Al Zahra’ for Girls and Prince Hamzeh bin Al Hussein won the first place for their games “Puk!” and “Surviving Time”, respectively.
The 8th Cycle the King Abdullah II Fund for Development chose the theme “The Great Arab Revolt” as part of the Kingdom’s centennial celebrations of the revolt. As part of the 6th Gaming Summit, the results were announced for the three regions: North, Middle, and South. The application “The Freemen’s Journey” developed by the students of Al Qadisieh Secondary School for Girls won first place in the middle region. As for the northern region, students from Al Mafraq Secondary School for Boys won the first place for their game “The Warrior Trail”. From Aqaba, Khalil Al Rahman Academy won the southern region prize for their application “Great Arab Revolt”.
The 9th cycle was held under the "Health" theme. The results were announced at the 7th Gaming Summit. The "Immunity Front Line" game developed by King Abdullah II School for Excellence (Zarqa) won first place in the middle region. The "Skeleton dash" game developed by King Abdullah II School for Excellence(Irbid) won the first place of the northern region, and the "Organ-izer" game developed by King Abdullah II School for Excellence (Tafila ) won the first place of the southern region.
The 10th cycle was held under the title "Citizenship". The results were announced at the 8th Gaming Summit. The game "Nashmi and Nashmieh" developed by girls from Tamadur Bint Amr Secondary School in Zarqa won first place for the middle region. "The Historic Man" game developed by boys from Souf Secondary school won the first place of the northern region, and the "Freedom" game developed by girls from Al Qwera Secondary School won the first place of the southern region.
On the sidelines of the PGC (Pocket Gamer Connects) event, which was held in cooperation with the Ninth Gaming Summit, results of the winning schools in the eleventh cycle were announced under the title "Hyper Casual Games". Hind Bint Abi Omaya School team from the Zarqa governorate won the first prize on the middle regional level for developing the “Snack Run” game. New Souf Secondary School for Girls from Jerash governorate won the first prize at the level of the Northern region for developing the game “The Happy Forest”. And the first prize in the Southern region was won by the Mansheya Secondary School for Girls from Karak governorate for developing the "Eco Finger" game.
in the 10th Jordanian Gaming summit, in partnership with "Pocket Gamer Connect", the final results of the APP Challenge competition were announced in its exceptional Cycle "develop your game from your home" 2020. At the level of the central region, first place was won by "Progress Team" for developing the "Health's Click" Game, At the level of the northern region, first place was won by "Pioneers of creativity Team" for developing the "Virus Attack" Game. At the level of the southern region, first place was won by "KASE Team" for developing the "Infector" Game, where the Cycle title was " Health Awareness".
The 11th cycle was held under the title "Space". The results were announced at Pocket Gamer connects Jordan 11. The game Astro Verse developed by Alqadisyeh Secondary School for boys / Madaba won first place for the middle region. The game Pestro’s Mission developed by King Abdulallah II for Excellence School/ AL Mafraq, won first place for the Northern region, Stare Vehicle gamed developed by Bousira Secondary Schools for girls / Al Tafilah won first place for the Southern region.
During the event, which was held at Al-Hussein Technical University, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research and Minister of Education, Dr. Azmi Mahafzah presented awards to the winning students in the 16 cycle of the competition, which focused on Traffic awareness.
The winners were Zhahr Al-Saru Secondary School for Girls from the Northern Region, for developing the game Margs's Tasks; Khawla bint Al Azwar Basic School from Balqa in the Central Region for developing the game "Rough Roads", and Karak’s King Abdullah II School for Excellence in the Southern Region for developing a game dubbed “Watchful Driving.” Each first-place winning school will receive a prize, namely, setting up a mini electronic gaming lab inside their respective schools.
The competition has provided 6466 direct and indirect opportunities