Hackathon is one of the secrets for the continuous development and growth of technology giants such as Google and Facebook. — Photo Topica

HÀ NỘI Viet Nam News -— The organising board of the Edtech Asia Hackathon 2016 contest announced the winning teams at the two-day contest in Hà Nội last weekend.

Edtech Asia Hackathon 2016 is a group programming contest; each group contained two to four people. Nineteen teams competed for 48 hours to provide innovative and unique technology products in the field of education.

It is the first time that the contest has been held in Việt Nam. The total awards of the contest, organised by Topica and Edtech Asia, with the sponsorship of the two technology giants, Facebook and Google, is up to US$90,000.

Team ACT, which includes four members, won first prize with the Muzikator application, which helps people learn music. The application can also combat some of the drawbacks of traditional music teaching.

By winning the first prize, the team will attend the Edtech Asia Summit in Bangkok, Thailand.

The app Kid REC from team Eezy won second prize and the FBStart Award, worth $80,000, from Facebook as the best mobile app.

Kid REC helps children between the age of six and 10 build emotional skills. The programme aims to use technology as a tool to help children interact with other people. Kid REC is a game model in which children record videos to complete the tasks.

The third prize went to team Powerify with Somia - dream without end application and team JustDoIt won the Topica Award with the Virtual Book application.

Hackathon is one of the secrets for the continuous development and growth of technology giants such as Google and Facebook. The “Like” button and Facebook’s Chat function (Facebook Message) were products from Hackathon contests.

Facebook and Google said they were very interested in the development of the technology community in Việt Nam in recent years, and spoke highly about the regular creative competitions as well as Hackathon.

Huỳnh Kim Tước from Facebook, said that Việt Nam had many excellent "actors" in IT, but there was a lack of stages for them.

The first Hackathon in Việt Nam opened a new stage for the country’s IT community, he added. — VNS