Programming Challenge participants acknowledged

Brett Size, Travis Broad and Greg Mott were presented with certificates of achievement from the 2008, National Computer Science School computer programming challenge. Brett and Travis achieved Credits in this, the first time we have offered this at Grant High.

The Challenge is run by the School of Information Technologies at the University of Sydney as part of the National Computer Science School (NCSS).

The Challenge is unlike other programming competitions because they teach students how to program as the challenge unfolds rather than expecting them to be an expert coder already. However, if they are a seasoned coder, they have something for them too because the problems range from relatively simple through to mind-bendingly hard.

For 5 weeks, the challenge organisers emailed students a short Python tutorial containing the information they needed to complete the week's programming challenges.

They then had until Sunday night to submit their solutions to the Challenge website, where they were marked. A full set of correct solutions, hints and commentary about each challenge was be sent out the following week.

We intend to be part of this again in 2009. Students can choose to do this as a extra curricular activity or do it as the negotiated activity in the GHS course, Negotiated Computer Learning, in semester 2. In this way the challenge can also be used to contribute towards SACE points.

Please talk to Peter Ruwoldt at the school of by email, ruwoldtp@granths.sa.edu.au, if you need more information about this 2009 event.

NCSS Challenge website - http://challenge.ncss.edu.au/