About the challenge

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.

Your project can be an app, website, tool, AI project, design prototype, or physical gadget. It can help friends, families, students, teams, organizations, neighborhoods, or communities connect, communicate, cooperate, give back, or share experiences. Projects can focus on communication, collaboration, accessibility, mutual support, volunteering, community building, shared activities, mentorship, creativity, or any other way technology can strengthen connections between people.

Once you register, you will have free access to tools for AI, app building, cloud deployment, workflow automation, custom domains, coding education, and more throughout the hackathon, courtesy of our sponsors.

AI tools are allowed and encouraged. You may use tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, or other coding and design assistants to brainstorm, code, debug, design, and build your project. Using AI will not lower your score. The goal is to help students explore ideas, build higher-quality projects, and see how computer science can create meaningful impact.

However, teams must disclose how they used AI and must be able to explain their project, their decisions, and how their final product works.

Stay Connected

Follow CSC throughout the hackathon for updates, reminders, project highlights, and future opportunities.

Follow @cscwebb on Instagram for major milestones, project highlights, winner spotlights, event recaps, reminders, updates, and future CSC events.

Join the Webb CSC Community on Discord for Q&A and support about submissions, judging, awards, and more.

Participation in these communities is optional and does not affect eligibility or judging.

Get started

1. Find a real way people could connect, cooperate, support one another, or share an experience more meaningfully.
2. Think about who your project is for and why that connection matters.
3. Build an app, website, AI tool, prototype, or gadget that helps make it possible.
4. Use any tools, tutorials, APIs, templates, datasets, or AI assistants that help you learn and build.
5. Submit your project on Devpost with an explanation, demo or other evidence of your project, and AI-use disclosure.

You may work individually or in teams of up to 4 people. A 1-2 minute demo video is optional but encouraged.

• Learning
  Can the team clearly identify what they built, why they built it, how it works, and what they learned? AI tools are allowed and will not lower anyone's score, but disclosure must reveal the use of AI and show understanding of the final product.
• Design
  Is the project easy to understand and use? A strong project will have a clear interface, thoughtful design, simple user flow, and practical use cases.
• Creativity
  Is the idea thoughtful, original, or interesting? A strong project does not need to be complicated, but it should show a clear, non-generic approach to bring people together or help people support one another.
• Functionality
  How well does the project work? A strong project should demonstrate the core idea through a working app, website, AI tool, gadget, design prototype, demo, or clear proof of concept.
• Impact
  Does the project address a real problem in connecting people? An strong project will clearly identify the target group and demonstrate how the technology fosters meaningful community connection or mutual support.