[Yr11 Information Technology] 2006 Programming Excellence Awards

[gavin at vitta.org.au]

Hi All (sorry for cross-posts),

The 2006 Programming Excellence Awards are here! This is one of the
biggest competitions of its kind in Australia, with $15,000 in prizes
available to secondary school students across Victoria. There are a
variety of challenges geared towards novice, intermediate, and experienced
programmers.

The Awards are run by VITTA in conjunction with DE&T and Microsoft and see
students from across the state using Microsoft Visual Basic.NET to
complete set tasks. In using a language that is both powerful and easy to
use, this competition is the perfect vehicle to allow talented programming
students strut their stuff while also learning about designing to a brief,
documentation, and testing. The novice and intermediate categories also
allow inexperienced students to learn about the skills required, and are
structured to easily allow teachers to work the problems into classroom
teaching.

What's more, VITTA is offering a series of FREE Professional Development
sessions around the state. These fully catered, half or full day sessions
will allow teachers to get a good understanding of both the language and
how to approach teaching the awards.

The official website, http://progawards.openlab.net.au , provides more
information on how to enter and the ability to register for the
Professional Development sessions.

If you have any queries at all, please address them to me:
gavin at vitta.org.au .

Cheers!

Gavin Ballard
Project Officer
VITTA