We are proud to announce our victory in the Singapore NetRiders/NetExcellence Challenge 2012 competition. The Singapore NetRiders & NetExcellence Challenge is an annual competition organized by Cisco Systems. This year, there were over 100 student teams and 40 instructors who participated from the various Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs). This competition provides a great platform for students to demonstrate their networking skills and knowledge and for instructors to showcase their coaching skills. 

  Our School of Infocomm (SOI) team comprising of 5 student teams and 3 instructors represented Republic Polytechnic (RP) at the competition on 20th September 2012. There were 2 categories namely, instructor's individual category and student's category. A special thanks to our 3 instructors - Mr Andy Lee, Mr Ivan Wee and Mr Mark Philip who competed successfully against instructors from other institutues. Our heartfelt congratulations to Mr Ivan Wee for winning the second prize - a 32GB iPod Touch under the instructor's individual category. 

A warm congratulation to our 5 student teams for their active participation against other students from various institutes. We thank the following students from the Diploma in Information Technology and the Diploma in IT Service Management namely, Muhd Halim Irsyad Bin Suhami (Team 1 Captain), Chang Ee Joe, Alvin Tandian (Team 2 Captain), Freny Nelin, Chua Chee Ann (Team 3 Captain), Ong Man Ru, Kaung Htet Aung (Team 4 Captain), Mohammad Jamshed S/O Mohommad and Goh Boon Leng (Team 5 Captain). 

Overall, it was a valuable experience for our students. This experience gained will serve them well in building up their portfolios and for their Cisco certification in future.

Our winning team from the SLA Spatial Challenge Competition 2012! The three team members, Han Myo Htwe (DBIS), Khin Yuya Thet (DIT), Paing Zin Oo (DIT) were awarded a plaque and a cash prize of $500 for their stupendous project titled "Ubiquitous Tracking and Scheduling System for Clinics (UTSC)". Their project bagged an honourable Eureka! award for its innovativeness and practicality in solving the issues arising from the growing demand for quality healthcare system in Singapore. The UTSC was implemented using Android Location-Based (eg: One Map) and Web Services Technologies. 

  The SLA Spatial Challenge 2012 Finals was held at HortPark on the 27th July 2012. The award ceremony was honoured by Ms Sim Ann, Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Education and Law. Supported by the Ministry of Education (MOE), this competition aims to encourage the use of Geospatial Information and Technology (GIT) in schools. Proposals from over 35 teams across 18 pre-university and tertiary institutions were received ranging from turning Singapore into a "Solarium Garden City" to spatial analyzes of clinics for the elderly. 

Over several months of hard work, our RP SOI team managed to succeed in this competition. All the past trainings or modules the team received has finally paid off. Not forgetting the hard work of the mentors, Mr Tok Nam Huat, Mr Frankie Cha and Mr Teo Zhi Yong for guiding the students and providing them with valuable inputs and suggestions on improving the system and the students' presentation. 

After winning the Singapore leg of JA’s Company of the Year Competition, our Y-Craft team of five second year students from SOI did all of us at RP proud by winning the prestigious FeDex ACCESS Award at the Asia Pacific finals held from 15 to 18 Feb.

The competition is jointly organized by FedEx Express and US-based JA Worldwide.  The competition celebrates the accomplishments of JA Company Program® students in the Asia Pacific region.  In addition to the JA Company of the Year Award, student companies also compete for the FedEx Access Award.  Besides having to convincing the judges on the viability of their business propositions as well as demonstrating effective operations of their business, the competing teams had to set up booths for a  trade fair exhibition at the City Walk Mall in Central Jakarta, which was opened to the public.

Sixteen teams representing 11 countries competed at the event.  Teams were from China, Guam, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Turkmenistan.

 World Champion at ThinkQuest 2011! 

For eight gruelling months, five of Republic Polytechnic's (RP) students from the School of Information and Communications Technology (SIT) planned, strategised, developed and managed a project using their critical thinking, communication and technology skills.

The five, Tan Chun How and Bernard Chang, from the Diploma in Information Technology (DIT), Rachel Quah and Jimmy Soh from the Diploma in Business Computing (DBC) and Andika Fiqri from the Diploma in Interactive and Digital Media (DIDM) created an entry called Balang Community Portal. Rachel and Chun How also happened to both be Lee Kuan Yew Award Winners in Mathematics and Science at the RP’s recent graduation, while Jimmy Soh is an Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) Gold Medallist award winner.

The team's Balang Community Portal, which was awarded First Place in the Application Development Event for the 22 and Under age division, addressed the need of the Balang Community in Cambodia to connect and inspire people to be involved in their development. The team’s portal provides information about the history of the Balang, volunteer opportunities, and serves as a vehicle for the collection of donations. It also has an e-shop for the community to sell the handicrafts they make.

Guided by their coach, Grace Yap and staff from SOI, Frankie Cha and Cavvy Chin, the students won prizes worth almost US$6,000.

The  InnovateIT 2011  is a business IT competition organised by the School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University. It aims to promote creativity and mental dexterity among students by challenging them to design, research and promote their IT-enabled solution to a real-world business problem.  Two teams from SOI participated in this competition and walked away with the 2nd prize and the Merit prize respectively.

The team (Nguyen Anh Minh, Trinh Hiep Dang Khoa and William) that won the 1st Runner Up proposed a creative IT solution called Gotcha that helps concerned members of the public stand forward to correct social behaviours. The Merit Award team (Che Yan Ru, Felicia Leng Shi Min and Soe Htike) came up with an innovative IT solution called The Social Motorist to alleviate road congestion and SMRT overload by allowing drivers and commuters to better utilize private transportation. Both teams impressed the judges by their abilities to define the problem they were trying to solve and their capabilities to articulate their solutions that were based on good research and the innovative application of IT.

The game, called "Dodge & Answer" makes the learning of Singapore's history and heritage fun for primary school children. The game was developed by Wang Gaoxiang, Du Yuanbo, and Amrutha Evangeline Martin, students from the Diploma in Information Technology from RP's School of Infocomm.cThe RP team who won second place in the Splash Awards 2011, a national-level IT competition The Splash Awards 2011 is part of the National Infocomm Competition and is jointly organised by the Singapore Computer Society (SCS) Student Chapter and the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).

The team faced several challenges in developing the game such as thinking of the game design given that no one in the group had any experience in developing a game. However, with the guidance of their mentor, Peter Kenny a senior academic staff with SOI, the team managed to overcome their challenges and beat the likes of Nanyang Polytechnic and Singapore Polytechnic to take home the second prize.

Second year students from the Diploma in Information Technology, Michael Loke, Eric Kong and Elvin Prananta, with help from mentor and facilitator Frankie Cha, developed "Hostages", an android game application that won the team a joint third in the Singapore Android Developer Challenge 2011. They were presented with a cash prize of S$3,000 at an awards ceremony held at Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

Given only a month for development, the RP team put their creativity and coding skills to the test. Their efforts bore "Hostages", a game application where players try to save civilians from the terrorists. Beside entertainment, the application also promotes social awareness on the possible terror threats to national security.