"PC Koshien 2014" held
Information
お知らせ
The 12th Annual All-Japan High School Computing Contest "PC Koshien 2014" was held at the University of Aizu over the weekend of November 8-9, 2014. This year's qualifying round saw a record 2,010 individuals in 657 teams apply. From among those teams, the top 72 individuals from 32 teams competed in this year's main competition.
The purpose of PC Koshien is to improve the information processing skills of high school and technical college students, who represent the future of our information-based society.
The Programming Division is a competition where teams have four hours to create programs to answer questions of varying difficulty levels, and the team with the most points wins. This year's Programming Division Finals had 48 contestants in 24 teams.
This year, competition was close between top teams, with some teams just managing to get their answers in before the end of the competition.
For the first time, this year's competition was streamed live on "niconico video" (*1). The UoA graduate commentators and the people watching the live stream both commented at how amazingly close the competition was.
When the name of the team from the Senior High School at Komaba, University of Tsukuba (Tokyo), "-273.15℃" was called at the award ceremony as the winner of the Grand Prize, the venue was filled with cheering, while its members were grinning from ear to ear. The runners up "Is" from Kaisei Academy High School, a pair of two first-year students, narrowly missed taking the Grand Prize, but took home the Newcomer Prize (*2) along with their second place prize. We have high hopes for them next year and beyond.
Concentrating hard on solving the problems (left), Teamwork is the path to victory (right)
Each team wants to earn as many balloons as they can (left), The winners were excited to take the Grand Prize. (right)
See the final results here
In the Mobile Division, teams competed to create the best Android application of a given theme. The theme for this year's competition was "Challenge! -Applications that turn your weaknesses into strengths-". During the main competition, each team gave a five-minute presentation and demonstration of their application. The winner is determined by the number of judge and audience votes they received.
Eight teams of 24 contestants participated in the Mobile Division. The novel ideas and highly polished presentations surprised judges, who made comments such as "this seems more like a company's product rollout than a high school competition," and "I would definitely like to use this application if it goes on the market." During the following demo session, each team conveyed the appeal of their application at their own unique display booth. Judges were given a chance to actually use the application and ask questions.
During the award ceremony, the thoroughly impressed judges made statements such as "even the teams that didn't win had a bunch of great ideas," and "the level of all the teams was very high" once again praising the ideas of each team. The delighted members of the Grand Prix-winning team "Caramel Pudding" included participants from last year, who commented that the bitter experience of last year's narrow defeat drove them to do their best this year.
Member of the "White Hackers" pointing at an "Android Wear" attached to his ankle (left), Team "Bulldog" explaining about tsunami evacuations. (right)
The booth of team "Caramel Pudding" had a kitchen theme (left), Receiving the highly sought-after Grand Prize (right)
| Prize | Team | App | Overview | School | Prefecture |
| Grand Prize | Caramel Pudding | Tekipakitchen! ("busy kitchen") | Displays multiple recipes in order. Equipped with automatic kitchen timer and touchless unlocking. | Okinawa National College of Technology | Okinawa |
| Best Idea Prize | White Hackers | Qoolqle | Application for learning how to cartwheel. Uses Android Wears on the wrist and ankle to analyzes angle and distance to provide advice on cartwheels. | Okinawa National College of Technology | Okinawa |
| Best Design Prize | Bulldog | Takasearch ("High ground search") | Overlays the location of high ground tsunami evacuation sites on a map. With the "Takaoni" (high-ground tag) mode, children can learn evacuation routes by playing a game of tag where they run to the evacuation zones. | Toba National College of Maritime Technology | Mie |
Over the two-day event, there was a display of the winning One Image CG division works, sale of original souvenirs, a corner for demonstrations of games created by the UoA Planning and Development Club (*3), a display of works from ASIAGRAPH 2014, a promotional corner for the Fukushima Destination Campaign (*4), free minestrone soup from Yamagiwa Shokusai Kobo (*5), booths for event sponsors, and a drawing to win local Aizu products. With a very tight, high-level competition in every division, this year's tournament was a great experience for the participants, judges, and spectators.
The winning works from the One Image CG division and details on competition are available on the PC Koshien website.
- *1 Live stream on niconico video:
- The competition was live-streamed on the video site "niconico video." There were 738 visitors and 880 comments (as of November 10).
- *2 Newcomer Prize:
- The Programming Division "Newcomer Prize" is awarded to the best-performing teams formed by first-year students from each region block designated by PC Koshien.