Prize for best final year project website
By
producing a webpage that describes your final year project to the
general public, you could win one of these cool gadgets: iPod, pocket
PC,
XBox 360, mobile phone or digital camera.
Purpose of the Competition
The School of Informatics is keen to communicate our science to the
wider community. Every year, many interesting projects are undertaken
by our final year students, but the dissertation is not a very
accessible record. To encourage dissemination and give an
opportunity
for students to engage in promoting public awareness of science and
engineering, we are offering a prize for the best webpage produced by a
final year student describing their project.
Hints and Tips
- A single page should describe the research, in lay-person terms
as
far as possible, using no more than 500 words.
- Think
about how you would describe what you did in your project to a
relative or friend. Why was it interesting? Could the results have
useful applications? Did unexpected things come out of the work? You
might like to take your cue from popular science writing, where a
common approach is to start with an imaginative 'hook'. The School's
research has featured in the media in the past and, if you wish to see
our collection of press cuttings, contact Diana Sisu.
- The page should also have two or three pictures that illustrate
critical issues or capture some appealing aspect of the work.
- Please include an animated or interactive
demonstration of the work, if you can. Flash player is
installed on DICE so you can use flash animations. However you should
keep in mind issues of readability, accessibility, download times
etc, so avoid unneccesary "bells and whistles".
- You can include links to extra pages with further details and
explanations if you wish, but more importantly should think about
links to other existing pages that might help put the work in context,
or make suitable further reading for anyone interested in the topic.
However the judges will not necessarily look at any further material,
i.e. it is the front page that counts for competition purposes.
- The page should also have the Informatics logo and link to our
homepage.
Examples of projects enterred in the competition previous years can be
found here:
http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/undergraduate/projects.html
How to submit your entry
- Check that your page validates with
http://validator.w3.org/
- Mount your web pages within the DICE directories
/public/homepages/<uun>/web/project/webcomp2006/
and
/public/homepages/<uun>/cgi/project/webcomp2006/
(Copies of these directories will be taken for judging, so you
should
ensure that all internal references are relative)
Closing date for entries is
Thursday
13 April 2006. On that date, all students with a page at
/public/homepages/<uun>/web/project/webcomp2006/
will automatically be entered in the competition.
Judging
The School's Publicity Committee will select the best pages for
inclusion on our public website and you will be able to refer
potential employers to them in your CV.
The Prize
The overall winner will receive the prize of their choice, from the
selection of gadgets listed above.
