The MIT Council for Educational Technology (MITCET) and the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology are pleased to announce the five winners of the first round of the 2011 iCampus Student Prize competition. Each of the winning projects embody the spirit of the competition—they are developing real solutions to enhance life and learning at MIT.
The 2011 competition is a two-stage competition. In the first round, student teams were asked to create working prototypes, and to define the needs assessment and impact of their projects. In the first round, the winners each received $1,000. First round winners have been invited to compete in the final round where they are competing for an up to $10,000 grand prize and are expected to deliver fully functional projects.
The 2011 iCampus Student Prize first round winners are:
Bookspicker: Bookspicker allows students to search for what textbooks are required for their classes, pick the ones they want and look for the best prices online, the Coop or locally. Team: Sinchan Banerjee ’11, Jonathan Goldberg BS ’09 & MEng ’10, and Rodrigo Ipince ’09.
Bookxor: Bookxor closes the feedback loop between students and professors for course notes providing professors analytics and enabling students to study collaboratively. Team: Peter Reinhardt ’12, Erika Bildsten ’12, Ilya Volodarsky ’12, and Calvin French-Owen ’12.
CrowdSkimmer: Crowdskimmer helps students “skim” the numerous articles they need to read by providing them keywords and key sentences. Team: Connie Chan ’12.
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P-set Central: P-set Central helps MIT students find and participate in study groups. Team: Catherine Fan ’14, Victor Hung ’14, Erica Lai ’14, Daniel Meza ’14, and Stephanie Yu ’14. 
Planner: Planer helps MIT students quickly construct their class schedule. Team: Adin Schmahmann ’13.
The judging panel, which included Paul Oka from Microsoft Research and Hal Abelson the Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, selected the five first round winners from a pool of twelve applicants. Details on the winning projects, as well as video of the five-minute “pitches” given by the students can be found online at: http://icampusprize.mit.edu/.
Final Round Competition—April 15
Please join us as the first round winners present their completed projects on April 15, 2011 from 4-6pm (location TBA). The final round competition begins with a poster session that allows guests and judges to speak with each group and learn more about the projects. The competition concludes with a lightning round of 5 minute presentations by each group. Judges for the competition include representatives from Microsoft Research, MIT faculty, representatives from educational foundations and more.
More Information
For more information on the iCampus Student Prize, and for details on the final round competition, please visit: http://icampusprize.mit.edu/.
About the iCampus Prize
The iCampus Technology Innovation Student Prize recognizes the innovative and creative application of technology that improves the educational and student life experiences at MIT. The competition builds upon the entrepreneurism and spirit of service exhibited by MIT students to solve the world’s problems by focusing attention of what might be improved closer to home in MIT’s education and student life.
The competition is open to all current MIT undergraduates and graduate students, both individuals and groups. Entries must involve the use of technology to enhance life and learning at MIT, and they must be developed to the point where MIT could adopt them and make them part of its environment.
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