[Yr11 Information Technology] Fwd: NCSS Challenge 2013 begins August 5th

Mon Jul 22 14:47:55 EST 2013

I am trying to enroll my class (10), but the Grok Learning web site is
making it hard for me!

Margaret

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