Students plan, host regional tech competition

Four Fox Chapel Area High School students planned and marketed a 12- hour “hackathon” at their school that hosted more than 180 students from southwestern PA. According to an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about the contest, a hackathon is an event where computer programmers collaborate to create something technological in a limited amount of time. The FCHacks event was sponsored by Eaton a national power management company. Students gathered to hear a speaker and then broke into groups to invent. Fox Chapel had 3-D printers, laser engravers and Arduino prototyping platform kits available throughout the school for the students to use. The finished products included a robot that could navigate while drawing and a glove that simulated an electronic string instrument. At the end of the day, the creations were judged by representatives from Eaton, Google, CMU, the University of Pittsburgh and .tech, a website domain company.