REDMOND Wash.
When Microsoft Corp.’s worldwide student software programming competition began four years ago, many projects that emerged were “fun,” according to Craig Mundie, the company’s chief research and strategy officer.
There was no shortage of smiles as Mundie and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates visited Tuesday with some finalists from this year’s Imagine Cup. But the problems the university students’ projects addressed education gaps in rural China, or the way blind and deaf students are shut out of mainstream classrooms were much more serious than the music-player programs Mundie remembers from the early days.
A team of students from Egypt presented a program that converts classroom tests into different formats to suit students with different disabilities, such as dyslexia or attention-deficit disorder. A French group worked on a joystick-style mouse and software that helps students with physical disabilities participate in some activities, such as practicing “handwriting” on a computer screen.
“They have moved gracefully from entertainment to serious” subjects, Mundie said in an interview.
Gates and Mundie spent a few minutes with each of the 10 teams that converged at the company’s headquarters from as far away as Hokkaido, Japan, and as near as Western Washington University in Bellingham. In August, these teams will compete with 100 other groups of finalists in South Korea for prizes of as much as $25,000. In all, the competition awards more than $170,000.
For many, meeting Gates was quite a rush.
