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

Roland Gesthuizen rgesthuizen at gmail.com
Mon Jul 22 15:14:59 EST 2013 

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?

Counting down to next week :-)

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

On 22/07/2013, at 2:47 PM, margaret.lawson at konstantkaos.net wrote:

> 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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> 
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