<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">I think that there may have been some server issues last week. I am trying again to upload my students on new using the bulk upload feature, just a plain old CSV. Are you uploading them one at a time?<div><br></div><div>Counting down to next week :-)<br><div apple-content-edited="true">
<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br>Regards Roland<br><br><b>Roland Gesthuizen</b> | eLearning Leader <br>Keysborough College DEECD<br><a href="http://about.me/rgesthuizen">http://about.me/rgesthuizen</a></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br>"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead</div></div></div>
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<br><div><div>On 22/07/2013, at 2:47 PM, <a href="mailto:margaret.lawson@konstantkaos.net">margaret.lawson@konstantkaos.net</a> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">I am trying to enroll my class (10), but the Grok Learning web site is<br>making it hard for me!<br><br>Margaret<br><br><blockquote type="cite">We have a few.<br><br>Esther Andrews | Admin Systems Developer, IT and Maths Teacher<br>Bendigo Senior Secondary College<br>Box 545 | BENDIGO | Victoria 3552 Australia<br>B +61 3 5443 1222 | F +61 3 5441 4548<br><a href="mailto:andrews.esther@bssc.edu.au">andrews.esther@bssc.edu.au</a><<a href="mailto:andrews.esther@bssc.edu.au">mailto:andrews.esther@bssc.edu.au</a>><br><a href="http://www.bssc.edu.au">www.bssc.edu.au</a><<a href="http://www.bssc.edu.au/">http://www.bssc.edu.au/</a>><br>Our ROLE is to empower learners for individual, community and global<br>leadership. We value Respect, Optimism, Learning and Environment.<br>________________________________<br>From: <a href="mailto:yr11it-bounces@edulists.com.au">yr11it-bounces@edulists.com.au</a> [<a href="mailto:yr11it-bounces@edulists.com.au">yr11it-bounces@edulists.com.au</a>] on<br>behalf of Roland Gesthuizen [<a href="mailto:rgesthuizen@gmail.com">rgesthuizen@gmail.com</a>]<br>Sent: Sunday, 21 July 2013 10:42 PM<br>To: Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List; eLearning mailing<br>list; Edulist IT11 List<br>Cc: Nicky Ringland<br>Subject: [Yr11 Information Technology] Fwd: NCSS Challenge 2013 begins<br>August 5th<br><br>Looks like we will have around 30+ students enrolled from our college in<br>this challenge. Who else from Victoria is joining us? There is still time<br>to rally interest and register before it kicks off next week.<br><br>Details below ..<br><br>Regards Roland<br><br>Roland Gesthuizen | eLearning Leader<br>Keysborough College DEECD<br><a href="http://about.me/rgesthuizen">http://about.me/rgesthuizen</a><br><br>"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can<br>change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has." --Margaret<br>Mead<br><br>Begin forwarded message:<br><br>From: Roland Gesthuizen<br><rgesthuizen@gmail.com<mailto:rgesthuizen@gmail.com>><br>Subject: Fwd: NCSS Challenge 2013 begins August 5th<br>Date: 11 July 2013 12:06:50 AM AEST<br>To: Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List<br><itapps@edulists.com.au<mailto:itapps@edulists.com.au>>, Edulist IT11 List<br><yr11it@edulists.com.au<mailto:yr11it@edulists.com.au>>, Edulist eLearning<br>List <elearning@edulists.com.au<mailto:elearning@edulists.com.au>><br><br>G'day fellow Vic IT teachers,<br><br>The NCSS challenge is really with joining. Details are below. Register<br>ASAP with your students.<br><br>We had a great time doing this last year for year 11 and 9, involving all<br>the students into our IT classes. Repeating it again for 2013. The<br>organisers offer oodles of online and realtime help and teachers can even<br>get to learn some programming along the way, especially with the new<br>Python 3 programming language.<br><br>It was so cool for a change to hand out some IT certificates at a school<br>assembly. I was really pleased that some of the girls went on to do year<br>12 IT :-)<br><br>Go for IT<br><br>Regards Roland @rgesthuizen<br><br>Begin forwarded message:<br><br>From: Nicky Ringland <challenge@ncss.edu.au<mailto:challenge@ncss.edu.au>><br>Date: 10 July 2013 5:40:54 PM AEST<br>To: undisclosed-recipients:;<br>Subject: NCSS Challenge 2013 begins August 5th<br><br>Hi CS4HS teachers!<br><br>The National Computer Science School Challenge<br>2013<https://groklearning.com/challenge/teachers?utm_source=csteachers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=challenge-2013>,<br>run by the University of Sydney, starts on August 5th for 5 weeks until<br>9th September. In the Challenge, students (and teachers) learn how to<br>program while they compete. Last year we had over 4200 high school<br>students (and some primary students) and 330 teachers from 420 schools<br>compete in the Challenge. This year we're hoping to more than double that<br>number, and we need your help to reach 10,000 students this year!<br><br>Many of you have enrolled your classes, and sometimes even whole school<br>years, in the NCSS Challenge. We would really appreciate it if you could<br>encourage your colleagues to take a look at participating in the Challenge<br>this year. The first part of the Beginners'<br>stream<https://groklearning.com/learn/challenge-beginners-2013/w1p1/0/> is<br>now available for free, so teachers and students have a easy way to<br>experiment with the content and judge if it's right for them.<br><br>Watch out for the NCSS Challenge poster and letter to teachers, sent to<br>the "head computing teacher" in every high school in Australia in the last<br>few days. Just in case you miss that, I've included more details below.<br>Also, we've made some changes for 2013, so if you've done the Challenge<br>before, you may still want to read the New in 2013 section below<br>(especially the change from Python 2 to Python 3).<br><br>We look forward to seeing you and your students in the Challenge!<br><br>What is the NCSS Challenge?<br><br>The NCSS<br>Challenge<https://groklearning.com/challenge/teachers?utm_source=csteachers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=challenge-2013><br>is an online programming competition for (high) school students and<br>teachers. Unlike most other competitions, we don't assume the students<br>already know how to program, instead students develop their Python<br>programming skills over the 5 weeks of the Challenge. Each week, we<br>release learning resources suitable for either in-class or self-directed<br>learning, covering many aspects of programming including: variables and<br>data types; if statements; while and for loops; algorithms; file I/O;<br>functions; code reading and debugging; and code style and comments. The<br>number and pace of the concepts covered varies between the three streams<br>of the Challenge: beginners, intermediate, and advanced. Enrolment in a<br>stream costs $20 per student (including GST). This can be paid by students<br>individually via PayPal, or your school can be invoiced for them as a<br>group. Students generally spend a few hours a week to complete all<br>questions, although this varies depending on which stream they are<br>enrolled in.<br><br>A set of 5-10 interesting and fun problems (the 'challenges') are released<br>at the same time which test the new material for that week and consolidate<br>understanding of the previous weeks' material. The difficulty of the<br>problems varies between the three streams of the Challenge. Each week's<br>problems also range in difficulty: starting with problems testing the<br>previous week's material, then introducing the new concepts in simpler<br>questions, and finally combining the concepts together. A student who<br>cannot complete the final question for week X, will still be able to solve<br>some of the simpler problems for week X+1 (so they shouldn't feel<br>disheartened if they can't solve the last problem from each week, there<br>will definitely be things they can solve the following week).<br><br>Participants submit their solutions to our web-based intelligent<br>auto-marking system which checks the correctness of their program against<br>a battery of test cases. These test cases are designed to lead the student<br>through solving the problem where possible, and encourage them to think<br>about thorough testing. Points are awarded for solving each problem and<br>there is a small penalty for making a large number of submissions to<br>discourage resubmitting without thinking!<br><br>Submissions close for a particular week's questions on Sunday evening. At<br>9am on Monday, the solutions, hints and commentary to those problems are<br>released, along with the notes and problems for the following week.<br>Students are still able to submit answers to problems and have them<br>auto-marked after the solutions are released, but they no longer receive<br>any points for getting them correct.<br><br>For more information about the Challenge, see our<br>website<https://groklearning.com/challenge/teachers?utm_source=csteachers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=challenge-2013>.<br><br>NCSS Challenge streams<br><br>There are three NCSS<br>Challenge<https://groklearning.com/challenge/teachers?utm_source=csteachers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=challenge-2013><br>streams: beginners, intermediate and advanced.<br><br>Beginners is an introductory course suitable with no prior programming<br>experience. This stream is most suited to students in junior secondary or<br>late primary school (11 - 16 year olds) or anyone who wants to start with<br>the basics. It covers variables, user input, strings, integers, floats,<br>lists (arrays), if statements, and for/while loops. Beginners has 10<br>problems per week – but the problems are quite similar to each other<br>conceptually (they look different, but emphasise the same underlying<br>concepts). So it is a bit more like programming drill – but fun!<br><br>Intermediate is designed for students who either have completed the<br>Beginners stream in a previous year, or have some other prior programming<br>experience (in Python or another programming language). This stream is<br>targeted at students in middle secondary school and above (14 - 18 year<br>olds), but advanced junior students will also enjoy it! It covers<br>dictionaries, files I/O and writing functions in addition to the concepts<br>in the beginners stream.<br><br>Advanced is designed for students who have either excelled at the<br>Intermediate stream in a previous year, or are already experienced<br>programmers. This stream is aimed at students in senior secondary school<br>(16 - 18 years) or extremely talented junior students. Advanced contains<br>very tough problems for experienced Python (or other) programmers, and<br>introduces additional material on regular expressions, recursion, parsing<br>and object-oriented programming.<br><br>Which Python stream is appropriate for your class?<br><br>My recommendation is that if you've got Year 5-8's doing the Challenge, go<br>for beginners. If you've got a weaker class of Year 9-10 students with no<br>exposure to programming, beginners might be appropriate. If you've got a<br>class of stronger students, or those with some experience in something<br>like Scratch, or similar programming environments, you might prefer the<br>additional content of intermediate. It also depends on how much time you<br>have to spend on going through the notes with the students before they<br>attack the problems. Other schools discuss the problems at an algorithmic<br>level (not the actual code required) and then the students program them<br>up. This extra support can make intermediate more accessible. Finally,<br>advanced is really designed for students who have conquered everything in<br>intermediate without breaking a sweat!<br><br>If you have a class with a great range in ability and interest, you might<br>like to choose a mixed strategy – putting some students in beginners and<br>others intermediate. Some students sign themselves up for multiple levels<br>at once. Another option is to start your class on beginners, and if they<br>are handling things easily, we can move some of them to intermediate<br>sometime during the second week (so they still have time to get all of the<br>points for week 2). If you'd like to do that, please email<br>challenge@ncss.edu.au<mailto:challenge@ncss.edu.au> or contact us through<br>the messaging system and we'll make the adjustments.<br><br>To give you some idea of completion rates: last year, 100% of students<br>attacked the first couple of questions in intermediate, but only 65%<br>solved the last problem in week 1. Then 87% of students solved the first<br>problem in week 2, dropping back down to about 66% for the last question<br>in week 2. In the end, over 50% of the students completed some of the<br>intermediate questions right through to Week 5.<br><br>When does the NCSS Challenge run?<br><br>The Challenge starts Monday 5th August and will run for 5 weeks. Questions<br>and resources will be released at 9am on Monday morning and the solutions<br>need to be submitted by 8:59pm on the following Sunday for beginner's and<br>intermediate, and 11:59pm Sunday for advanced. The first week is our<br>'friendly week' and so there are no points for solving the problems. This<br>gives participants a chance to install and run Python on their own<br>machines, and get used to our online testing system, and judge which<br>stream they should compete in. It also means it is possible to sign up at<br>any time next week without being disadvantaged at all (or even part way<br>into week 2 of the Challenge).<br><br>How do I enrol my class and how much is it?<br><br>As well as individual enrolments from students and teachers, we have a<br>bulk enrolment option for schools which allows a teacher to either<br>manually enter a whole class or upload a CSV file of names and email<br>addresses. This can then be paid in one go either via PayPal or through<br>an invoice to the school.<br><br>The cost is $20 per participant (student or teacher) per stream including<br>GST. There is a $30 yearly subscription available that gives students or<br>teachers access to all three Challenge streams, and all other courses and<br>competitions created by Grok Learning (see below). We know that it can<br>take some time for schools to collect money and send us a cheque, so we<br>are happy for participants to start the competition before the money<br>arrives. We will not send out certificates of participation and<br>commendation unless the payment has been received.<br><br>Interaction on the site<br><br>Students get instant feedback on the correctness of their submissions, and<br>the test cases give them hints as to what they got wrong. Top performing<br>students appear on separate leader boards for each stream – split into<br>junior (Year 5-8), intermediate (Year 9-10) and senior divisions (Year<br>11-12), and this is updated as soon as students submit correct solutions.<br><br>We have online forums for general topics and also for each problem, and<br>the participants have been very helpful (whilst maintaining some spirit of<br>competition) when others have been stuck on a problem. There is a real<br>community that forms during the competition, and it is great to see<br>students connect with others who are also passionate about programming. We<br>also have a large number of tutors who monitor participants' progress and<br>send encouragement and hints via a messaging system within the site. Help<br>is almost always moments away – in fact, often we will have answered a<br>question before a teacher would have had time to move across the classroom<br>and answer it in person!<br><br>Teachers in the Challenge<br><br>Some teachers enrol in the Challenge for their own professional<br>development or just the fun of conquering the problems themselves.<br>Teachers can see both a summary of the performance of their students in<br>each stream the students are enrolled in, and inspect all of their<br>submissions. Some schools have used the Challenge as an in class activity<br>for 5 weeks, others have created lunch time clubs for working on problems,<br>while others still have just set them as fun after school extension<br>material for gifted students. We have been particularly pleased to hear<br>stories of students rushing to the whiteboard to discuss how to solve the<br>problems. In a couple of cases, we've heard of schools using some<br>questions as assessment tasks.<br><br>There are also separate teacher only forums to discuss how your students<br>are finding the questions and share ideas and resources with other<br>teachers.<br><br>New in 2013: Grok Learning<br><br>The NCSS Challenge team have started a company, Grok Learning Pty Ltd.<br>Our goal in starting Grok Learning is to do more: more students in more<br>countries; more intelligent auto-marking; more courses, projects and<br>competitions running more times each year. We will make NCSS<br>Challenge-like courses available throughout the year (so you can teach<br>programming whenever it suits you), and introduce many new courses in the<br>next few months, including other programming languages, and technologies<br>including SQL and HTML/CSS. This will all be available through an simple<br>annual subscription for students and teachers of $30 (signing up through<br>their schools) or $100 (students signed up directly by their parents),<br>which is the familiar pricing model used by Mathletics.<br><br>We have also developed an entirely new learning environment and<br>auto-marking system. The learning environment now allows students to edit<br>and run programs directly in the browser (although we still strongly<br>recommend installing Python locally, so students can write programs<br>independently). Each snippet of code in the notes can be run and<br>modified. Challenge questions are now directly integrated with the<br>learning materials, which have been broken up into more manageable<br>slide-sized chunks. Hopefully students will find the learning materials<br>less daunting now, and will be able to navigate back a few slides to find<br>the concepts they need to solve each problem.<br><br>Finally, we have made the move from teaching Python 2 to Python 3. Python<br>3 involves backwards incompatible changes in the Python language syntax.<br>For beginner programmers, the changes are not difficult (the most obvious<br>change is that the print statement is now a function, and so must be<br>called with parentheses). Python 2 programs will be marked as incorrect<br>by the marking system, and so you must install a new version of Python.<br>We recommend you install Python 3.3.2<http://www.python.org/download/><br>from the Python website.<br><br>If you have any questions, please email<br>challenge@ncss.edu.au<mailto:challenge@ncss.edu.au> or ring me on (02)<br>9036 9712<tel:%2802%29%209036%209712> or 0407 020<br>099<tel:0407%20020%20099>.<br><br>We look forward to seeing you and your students on the NCSS<br>Challenge<https://groklearning.com/challenge/teachers?utm_source=csteachers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=challenge-2013><br>site!<br><br>Kind regards,<br><br>Nicky<br><br><br>---<br><br><br>NICKY RINGLAND<br>Outreach Officer | National Computer Science School |<br>http://www.ncss.edu.au<http://www.ncss.edu.au/><br>PhD student | School of Information Technologies | Faculty of Engineering<br>and IT<br><br>THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY<br>Room 444 | Building J12 | The University of Sydney | NSW | 2006<br>T +61 2 9036 9712 | F +61 2 9351 3838 | M +61 407 020 099<br>E challenge@ncss.edu.au<mailto:challenge@ncss.edu.au> | W<br>https://groklearning.com/challenge<https://groklearning.com/challenge?utm_source=challenge&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=footer><br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>http://www.edulists.com.au - FAQ, resources, subscribe, unsubscribe<br>Year 11 It Mailing List kindly supported by<br>http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce/studies/infotech/infotechindex.html -<br>Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority<br>http://www.vitta.org.au - VITTA Victorian Information Technology Teachers<br>Association Inc<br>http://www.swinburne.edu.au/ict/schools - Swinburne University<br><br></blockquote><br>_______________________________________________<br><a href="http://www.edulists.com.au">http://www.edulists.com.au</a> - FAQ, resources, subscribe, unsubscribe<br>Year 11 It Mailing List kindly supported by<br><a href="http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce/studies/infotech/infotechindex.html">http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce/studies/infotech/infotechindex.html</a> - Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority <br><a href="http://www.vitta.org.au">http://www.vitta.org.au</a> - VITTA Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association Inc<br><a href="http://www.swinburne.edu.au/ict/schools">http://www.swinburne.edu.au/ict/schools</a> - Swinburne University<br></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>