The CSC Winter Sparkathon is a beginner-friendly high school hackathon where students build technology that brings people together and helps people support one another. Participants can create an app, website, tool, AI project, design prototype, or physical gadget designed to help friends, families, students, teams, organizations, neighborhoods, or communities connect, communicate, cooperate, give back, or share experiences.
Projects may focus on communication, collaboration, accessibility, mutual support, volunteering, community building, shared activities, mentorship, creativity, or any other way technology can strengthen connections between people. Teams may work individually or in groups of up to four people.
AI Tools AI tools are allowed and encouraged. Participants may use tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, or other coding and design assistants to brainstorm, code, debug, design, and build their projects. Using AI will not lower a team's score; the goal is to help students explore ideas and build higher-quality projects. However, teams must disclose how they used AI and be able to explain their project, their decisions, and how their final product works.
Prizes The event features several awards for projects that best facilitate community connection and mutual support: * CSC Spark Gold Award: Recognizes the project that most effectively brings people together or helps them support one another through thoughtful, useful, and well-executed design. * CSC Spark Silver Award: Recognizes an excellent project with strong execution, clear usefulness, and meaningful relevance to connecting or supporting people. * CSC Spark Bronze Award: Recognizes a strong project that clearly identifies a real problem regarding community connection or mutual support and presents a promising technology-based solution. * CSC Spark Honorable Mention: Recognizes additional standout projects that show creativity, effort, learning, and potential impact.
To be eligible for these awards, teams must opt in and agree to the eligibility terms listed in resources.