{"id":27110,"date":"2019-04-07T16:38:41","date_gmt":"2019-04-07T21:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=27110"},"modified":"2019-04-07T16:38:41","modified_gmt":"2019-04-07T21:38:41","slug":"apsu-students-win-bbest-solo-hack-place-second-overall-at-regional-hackathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2019\/04\/07\/apsu-students-win-bbest-solo-hack-place-second-overall-at-regional-hackathon\/","title":{"rendered":"APSU students win Bbest Solo Hack, place second overall at Regional Hackathon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Austin Peay State University (APSU)<\/h2>\n

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – Austin Peay State University (APSU) senior Susan Kersten recently won \u201cBest Solo Hack\u201d at the CatHacks hackathon at the University of Kentucky, and her teammates won second place overall at the competition for hack that helps teach people sign language.<\/p>\n

The wins add to the hackathon success Austin Peay students have had this year.<\/p>\n

\"From<\/a>

From the left, Austin Peay State University students Aidan Murphy, Susan Kersten and Nathan Nickelson work on their hacks.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Susan Kersten \u2013 \u2018Best Solo Hack\u2019<\/h3>\n

Kersten worked solo to find a way to switch between presentations when multiple people have PowerPoint presentations to give.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve been in classrooms where there are multiple students doing presentations in a row, and there\u2019s always a good five minutes of downtime where nothing happens because one person is waiting to log in, or get to their PowerPoint,\u201d Kersten said.<\/p>\n

\"From<\/a>

From the left, Nathan Nickelson, Dylan Engle and Aidan Murphy work on their hack, \u201cLeapLearning: Sign Language.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

The hack she created, which she named \u201cThe People\u2019s Power(Points),\u201d congregates links to everyone\u2019s PowerPoint, \u201cwith the idea you would make a \u2018session\u2019 for your unique set of presentations,\u201d loading pages on cue. She built the hack using only a small, $200.00 Linux Lite laptop.<\/p>\n

You can read more about Kersten\u2019s hack at https:\/\/devpost.com\/software\/the-people-s-power-points<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Her successful hack allowed her to remember \u201cthe joy of getting deep into a project where I\u2019m learning and keep finding new things as I work through problems,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Dyland Engle, Nathan Nickelson, Aidan Murphy \u2013 2nd Place Overall<\/h3>\n

Dylan Engle, Nathan Nickelson and Aidan Murphy created a hack that teaches sign language by example. Learners can perform a piece of sign language, and the program will tell them if they performed the sign correctly.<\/p>\n

[320right]\u201cOne of our team members had worked with the Leap Motion at a previous hackathon, so we decided to give it another try and help people to learn sign language,\u201d the team wrote on its entry webpage.<\/p>\n

The team named their hack \u201cLeapLearning: Sign Language.\u201d You can read more about the hack at https:\/\/devpost.com\/software\/leaplearning-sign-language<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The accomplishment they\u2019re most proud of? \u201cWe managed to actually get a working proof of concept for the program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kerston, Engle, Nickelson and Murphy are members of the Austin Peay Association of Computing Machinery, which has had a lot of success at hackathons this year. Team members also did well at HackGT at Georgia Tech<\/a> and VolHacks at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville<\/a>.<\/p>\n

CatHacks, which was March 30th-31st this year, draws college hackers from across the nation for the 24-hour competition and networking event.<\/p>\n

To Learn More<\/h3>\n