Application developed by a team at UFSC is awarded in MIT competition
The QFruta? app, developed by the Computação na Escola [Computing at School] project, from the Department of Informatics and Statistics (INE) of the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), was awarded third place in the adult track of the 2022 MIT Appathon for Good. Organized by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), this is a marathon-style event to create applications – through the App Inventor platform – that solve one of the needs relating to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The QFruta? proposes to allow the registration and localization of fruit trees and supports the Sustainable Cities and Communities, Zero Hunger and Life on Land goals. According to Christiane Gresse von Wangenheim, a professor at INE and one of the award-winning team members, there is no prospect of making the application available in app stores. The reason is that the application would require manual monitoring of the points to be inserted, and there is no financial resource that allows for this type of action. However, the software code is available on cursos.computacaonaescola.ufsc.br/app-qfruta-2 to anyone interested in creating a similar application.
Computação na Escola is an initiative of the National Institute for Digital Convergence (Incod/INE/UFSC), in cooperation with the Instituto Federal de Santa Catarina (IFSC) and endorsed by the Brazilian Society of Computing. The project is dedicated to teaching computing to primary and secondary education students and training them to be creators of information technologies (IT) solutions, through activities that encompass programming, user interface design and Machine Learning, among others. The idea is that QFruta? can also be used as an example in the courses.
In addition to Prof. von Wangenheim, the doctoral students Ramon M. Martins and Marcelo F. Rauber, from the Graduate Program in Computer Science (PPGCC) at UFSC, and the researcher Nathalie F. Ferreira participated in the development of the application.
Translated by SINTER/UFSC.
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