Apple’s annual developer conference, WWDC, was held between June 6 and 10 this year, and we told you what’s going on. Among the participants of the event, where many new technologies from iOS 16 to Apple M2 were announced, there were 8 Turkish students who won the Swift Student Challenge.
Educated at Ankara Zafer College, winning the competition for three consecutive years and re-entering the list. 17-year-old Mehmet Bertan Tarakcioglumade a presentation to Apple CEO Tim Cook.
BlinkBoard enables communication with a blink
Professor Stephen HawkingTarakçıoğlu, who won the competition with the BlinkBoard project, which he stated that he developed with inspiration from .
Focusing on eye movements provides greater compatibility between different iPads.
Over the years, Hawking has communicated with people using his right cheek, the only part of his body he can move.
Mehmet Bertan Tarakcioglu who?
“Hello! I am Bertan and I am very happy to join you today from Ankara, Turkey. I am now 17 years old, 11th grader and also in love with all things technology, coding and Apple!
I first started coding when I was in the fourth grade with a book I bought from my school with the last money I had left. I finished that book in a week and a half. I was already in love with coding!
My Swift journey started unexpectedly after I downloaded Xcode on my 2014 Mac Mini, which I bought with the money I saved in 5th grade, because I thought it had a pretty cool name.
I experimented with Xcode and made a simple app without coding using interface builder. After installing this app on the iPod Touch running iOS 6, I was amazed at the endless possibilities of app development. So I wanted to go further and started learning Swift through online video tutorials, blog articles and ebooks.
Now I would like to tell you about some of my current projects and activities.;
I have an app called Capturinator on the Mac App Store! It is powered by Apple’s Object Capture API, which allows users to transform photos of an object from multiple angles into 3D USDZ models. These models can be used in a wide variety of fields, from game development to e-commerce.
I’m also part of TurkishKit, an organization made up of high school and college students that offers Turkish resources on Apple development. A few Swift lessons we have prepared and an article where I share my experiences as a Swift Student Challenge winner are available on TurkishKit Medium.
In my spare time, I work on various coding and electronics projects using Arduino, Raspberry Pi and similar platforms. I recently installed my IoT weather station and an accompanying app, powered by 100 percent renewable energy, to display collected weather data!
I also share the source codes of those projects on GitHub!
Earlier this academic year, I started a Swift Coding Club at our school where I teach other students how to practice using Swift! We’ve covered the basics of programming and Swift, and we’re currently working on developing SwiftUI-based apps.
We meet every Friday after school, teaching Swift was even more fun than I thought!
I won the Swift Student Challenge for the third time and my project this year BlinkBoard it happened.