2014 Eircom Junior Spiders winners announced

Hosted by RTÉ’s Aidan Power, the awards recognise and reward primary and post primary students for the innovative ways they use the internet, especially around website development, school blogs and design.

At primary level, the Mega Spiders have three categories – Best Project, Best School Blog and Best School Website.

For post primary students the awards are split across two categories. The Giga Spiders rewards students from first to third year and the Tera Spiders are open to students from fourth to sixth year. The Giga and Tera Spiders reward students under the categories Best Concept, Best Project, Best Web Design and the Suiomh Is Fearr award rewards students for the best site using the Irish language. The Tera Spiders also has the Best App award and the three categories have an overall grand prix winner.

“What a fantastic bunch of winners we have. Congratulations to each and every school. We had a tremendous response to the awards this year resulting in a 45pc increase in entries. Competition was genuinely stiff so it’s an incredible achievement to win an award,” said Lisa Comerford, consumer marketing director, Eircom and chairperson of the judging panel.

“Again this year we had such a great mix of projects from class blogs to websites on exam tips, music and even F1 racing featured. For the first time we included an award for ‘Best Digital Game’ – the winners were Midleton College, Cork for their entry Spacechaser. The judges were really impressed with the overall design and functionality of various aspects of the game – in particular the strong use of sound and specific gaming elements such as the teleport function, counter intuitive ship design and they felt it was particularly innovative thinking to equip the enemy ships with an endurance bar.

“Overall this year the creativity, skill and sheer ingenuity demonstrated by the students has been truly mind blowing.”