Community Judges selected for the OpenUK Kids Competition 
We are delighted to announce that the OpenUK Learning Committee have chosen 3 Community Judges to participate in this year’s OpenUK Kids’ Competition joining our other Judges. The community Judges are part of the team of 9 Judges choosing the 4 Regional Winners for our OpenUK Kids Competition.
Congratulations to the 3 Community Judges selected by the Learning Committee. They are:
Adrian Woodhead, Principal Software Engineer, Expedia
Lorna Mitchell, Developer Advocate, Vonage
Elliott Hall, Senior Software Engineer, King’s Digital Lab
They will join the 5 appointed Judges deciding the Regional Winners of our Kids Competition:
Paul Taylor and Kavita Kapoor, the joint Chair of the OpenUK Learning Action Group – Kavita has kindly taken on the mantle of head judge – Gina Likins, School-Aged STEM Volunteer Outreach Program Coordinator at Red Hat, Gareth Stockdale, CEO of the micro:bit foundation, and Helene Virolan, of Girls into Coding.
The overall winning National Winning Team will be decided by our Special Guest Judging Panel:
Double Grammy Award winning singer and inspiration for the MiniMu glove, Imogen Heap, who has been a great supporter of this competition and created the voiceover for episode one of our Kids Course, Creator of the MiniMU glove, Helen Leigh, Chair of Children in Need, Rosie Millard, and GitHub COO Erica Brescia.
You can read a little bit more about each of the Judges by clicking on their names.
This new UK competition for kids at Key Stage 3 or equivalent replaced our original competition due to the Pandemic and inspired the development of our kids course.
The judging will take place between 1 and 7 October. Regional Winners of the Kids Competition will be invited to attend the OpenUK Awards on 20 October when the National Winner will be announced.
About the Competition
The competition is based on assembling and using MiniMU gloves in a collaborative project in teams of 4.The MiniMU kit is a make-it-yourself musical glove for children aged 8 and above, and based on the MiMU Gloves designed by multiple Grammy award-winning musician Imogen Heap.
To take part in the competition, teams registered by 17 May and were provided with a MinMU glove kit per child, free of charge with priority access to the OpenUK Kids Course. During the Course Kids made their glove kits, and they are now participating in the fun animated lessons which will be released for the wider population in August as part of the OpenUK Digital Kids Camp. The Course is a Phase One Winner in the Gnome Community Engagement Challenge.
Our competition will take place in September when the 48 registered teams of 4 kids will collaborate to create 3, 1-2 minute long videos on their experiences including:
- a diary
- their creative use of the glove
- the importance of open technology
As part of the awards pupils will learn more about open technologies and provide their responses on the value that open source offers to them.
The contest aims to expand awareness of the value that open technology can bring to individuals and society, and is being supported by Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions and GitHub, the world’s leading software development platform.
If you didn’t register this year, we hope you will take part next time.
For questions about the competition email admin@openuk.uk