2013 Yearbook - Universidad ORT Uruguay

57 Universidad ORT Uruguay OUTREACH Universidad ORT Uruguay 2013 School of Engineering Camino TICs The Camino TICs project offers full scholarships for technical degree programs in the field of Information Technology. Its goal is to enable young people who have dropped out of the formal education system to continue their studies and subsequently enter a sector with high employment potential. The Rotary Club (Aguada) and the Uruguayan Chamber of Information Technology (CUTI) collaborate on the project. In 2013, 94 candidates applied, of whom 39 were selected and received full scholarships. This program is funded by scholarships awarded by Universidad ORT Uruguay donations from the Itaú Foundation, Bantotal, CSI Ingenieros, Gallito.com, Montevideo Shopping, and Unión Capital AFAP. “Scratch Day - Universidad ORT UruguayOn May 17, the School of Engineering and the Institute of Education organized the “Scratch Day” event for secondary school teachers, which consisted of a presentation of examples of how to use the Scratch program. The activity was led by Dr. Inés Kereki, Professor of Programming. In addition to the presentation of teachers’ work, two workshops were held: Scratch 2.0 and Scratch/Enchanting. Scratch is a programming language developed by the MIT Media Lab that allows users to create animations and games and helps them become familiar with the basic concepts of programming. More than 50 secondary school teachers participated in the activity. “13th ORT Programming Contest” As part of the “16th Student Conference” of the School of Engineering, held on September 24, the “13th ORT Programming Contest” took place. The top two teams from the contest represented the university in the Latin American Final of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Programming Contest, which took place in Buenos Aires from November 8 to 10. The team consisting of Diego Cáceres and Germán Chiazzo, Systems Engineering students, and Ismael Rodríguez, an Electronics Engineering student, placed 64th (top 4.85%), and the team composed of Martín Copes, Martín Fernández, and Andrés Pache, Systems Engineering students, placed 231st (top 17.52%). A total of 1,318 teams participated in the Latin American competition.