Presenting the inaugural Western Australian prizes, Mr Marmion said the competition was a collaborative effort of industry, government and academia, focused on building a robust and sustainable ICT capability for the burgeoning digital economy.
“It is incredibly exciting to see so many talented young West Australians using their creative minds to produce such innovative and high-quality technology projects,” he said.
The Young ICT Explorers’ event invites students from Year 3 through Year 12 to create ICT-related projects. The competition is aligned with the school curriculum enabling students to apply ICT classroom lessons to develop a technology-related project of their choice.
Digital technologies contributed nearly $80 billion to Australia’s GDP in 2013-14 and the figure is forecast to grow rapidly.
“To support this anticipated growth, it is predicted that up to 100,000 more ICT professionals will be needed nationally by 2021, thousands of those in WA,” the Minister said.
“I fully support the vision of Young ICT Explorers in encouraging students to apply their bright young minds to fields including science, engineering, environment and sustainability, business and entertainment.
“Given the rapid pace of change in technology, we do not even know what the nature of many of these new jobs will be. What we do know is they will require innovative and creative problem solvers like every one of the students here today.”
Fact File
- Young ICT Explorers is a national, not-for-profit competition which aims to inspire primary and secondary students to consider careers in ICT
- The competition is now in its sixth year nationally
- Judging criteria includes creativity, innovation, quality, completeness, level of difficulty, and project documentation
- For information and 2015 winners, visit http://www.youngictexplorers.net.au/
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