“Hack the Future” Event a Success at Choctaw Indian Reservation

The Mississippi Coding Academies were honored to be one of the partners for “Hack the Future,” the inaugural hackathon and advanced technologies event held in Neshoba County at the reservation of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.

The event, which was coordinated by the MBCI’s Office of Economic Development, was centered on the idea of getting young people into teams and having them tackle some critical problems in creative ways.

The event also including virtual reality and augmented reality demonstrations, a mobile lab and a mobile NASA planetarium that the students could experience.

Golden Triangle coder Leigh Jones worked in a group that explored “using virtual reality headsets in classrooms in order to encourage learning by solving math problems to get through a game,” according to a story about the event in the Meridian Star.

Kingdom McGee lead the winning team in the competition.

In that story, reporter Devna Boss quotes Jones as saying: “This is a good learning opportunity to collaborate with teams and a good networking event.”

Nine teams competed in the event. The first place team was led by Mississippi Coding Academy coder Kingdom McGee, who also received an MVP award for being outstanding in the competition. His team was comprised of Slater Borchers (MCA Golden Triangle) and a student from Choctaw Central high school.

Our Golden Triangle coders also were part of the team that took third place place—a team of five included Angela Pugh and Kayla Woodard.

Andrew Stamps, our coding instructor in the Golden Triangle,  did an outstanding job mentoring multiple teams in the competition.

We thank the Meridian Star and others, such as WTOK, who covered the event, and we look forward to working with the MBCI and other partners on future “hacking” opportunities!

Read the “Young minds learn to ‘Hack the Future’ by the Meridian Star.