Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter

A team of four students and their teacher from Northern Caribbean University (NCU) beat nearly 5,000 entries from the region to represent the Central America and Caribbean in a worldwide computer software development competition.

NCU impressed with their Computer Aided Distance Instruction (CADI) software, which can connect students in different countries during shared lessons conducted online, available in 12 languages which are translated in real time.

The students and their teacher will take part in the Microsoft-sponsored Imagine Cup to be held in Seoul, South Korea, in August.

Among the CADI's other features, students can interact with each other by messaging and sharing electronic notes.

Damion Mitchell, Ayston Baxter, Conroy Smith, Imran Allie - who will all graduate in August - and adviser Kenrie Hylton will compete in the software category of the Cup, which has already seen 100,000 entries worldwide.

"I stand in the presence of creative genius!" said University of Technology Pro-Chancellor Dr. Blossom O' Meally-Nelson at a presentation for the NCU team at Microsoft Jamaica headquarters on Knutsford Boulevard in New Kingston yesterday.

USEFUL

Dr. O' Meally-Nelson lauded the software as "useful, relevant and self-sustaining".

The Manchester-based NCU is now seeking to develop the software for commercial release.

"It's something that we want to invest in and right now we still have a lot of refinement to do," said Mr. Hylton, who chairs the NCU Department of Computer and Information Sciences. "We are going to start testing it amongst our various campuses - Kingston, MoBay (Montego Bay) - before we go any further."

Joseph McKinson, Microsoft Jamaica manager, said that from his initial impressions, the software was "excellent". Asked if Microsoft, the world's largest software company, might be interested in investing in CADI, Mr. McKinson said it would be a possibility given its history of developing and acquiring software.

Strong programme

"What I think these guys need to do as we do in Microsoft is to use it internally and with affiliations with other universities in other parts of the world and maybe you could see a very strong programme coming out of these trials," he told The Gleaner. "It's one thing to present these solutions and when they are tested from a robust standpoint."

This is not the first time that NCU have performed well in the competition, which was launched by Microsoft in 2002. NCU won the right to represent Central America and the Caribbean previously in 2005 and came second in the region last year.

ross.sheil@gleanerjm.com