Where will Digital Technology take you?

Welcome to Young ICT Explorers! Registrations for 2024 are open

Young ICT Explorers (YICTE) is a non-profit competition, created by SAP, supported by CSIRO Digital Careers and The Smith Family with the help of Industry and University partners across Australia, to encourage primary and high school students in years 3-12 in Australia to solve real-world problems or showcase their passions using technology. That could be anything from creating better ways to recycle, to supporting people with disability; from creating virtual reality worlds, to building  entire operating systems and robots from the future –students can use their imagination and their interest in the world around them to create projects, we want students excited about working with technology. The work we do directly with our partner, The Smith Family (TSF), is on a dedicated funding program, which enables disadvantaged youth to have equal access to participate and engage in the competition through our YICTE Accelerator program.

Think of YICTE like a science fair, but for technology and innovation instead. Our goal is to inspire school students of all technical ability levels to use their creativity and innovation to gain a greater understanding of the diverse possibilities available to them through today’s technology, encouraging students to consider future study and a career in tech, while solving real world problems with their choice of technology, with YICTE being the showcase event for students to attend each year. Projects can be anything created in class time, or students can enter extracurricular projects they are working on. YICTE compliments the school Digital Technologies curriculum, with almost any technology based projects eligible to enter! Students can work alone or in teams of up to four students (we suggest they team up!) To date, nearly 8,000 students have taken part, from approximately 850 school across Australia and New Zealand.

Podcast_YoungICTExplorers

Once teams know what they will create, they will need to enter a project report submission – this is an outline of the project, detailing what and why they created it and what technologies they have used. These reports are then reviewed and judging times organised with schools for the teams to present their projects to our judges panels.

Projects are marked on four main criteria:

  • Creativity and Innovation
  • Project Difficulty
  • Quality and Completeness and
  • Presentation and Documentation.

Judging panels are made up of industry experts and university academics working in the digital technology sector. These are held via Zoom sessions, or teams can send in taped video presentations telling us about their digital creations. Each team receives written feedback from our expert judges and are provided with participation and placeholder certificates. We give away approx. $30,000 each year to teams that receive a first, second or third place.

Find a Young ICT Explorers event near you

event-brisbane

South East Queensland

Date/Location: Virtual Judging – August – October.

Registration Open

event-townsville

November

Date/Location: Virtual Judging – August – October.

Registration Open

event-sydney

New South Wales

Date/Location: Virtual Judging – August – October.

Registration Open

event-melbourne

Victoria

Date/Location: Virtual Judging – August – October.

Registration Open

WA

Western Australia

Date/Location: Virtual Judging – August – October.

Registration Open


Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania, South Australia

Date/Location: Virtual Judging – August – October

Registrations Open