Programming Contest - April 16, 2011

April's programming contest is just around the corner! We are pleased to announce that Amazon.com will be sponsoring this contest!!

Amazon's sponsorship will include an Amazon speaker before the contest, a t-shirt for each participant, and kindles and gift cards for the raffle. Cost for this contest is the same as before ($30/team) and students will still be provided with donuts/juice for breakfast (sponsored by UW), pizza/snacks/drinks for lunch, and medals for the top three teams in both the novice and overall divisions. WHAT A STEAL!

• Registration will be open until April 8th (deadline for payment as well)



• You can use December's contest as practice problems, but note that April's contest will not have a division in novice and advanced problems. Both divisions will receive the same problem packets

site updates

Cleaning up some backlogged work on our site, I updated the Resources page with links to websites of some members who have recently shared this information. I also posted some minutes of recent meetings on the Meetings page.

Thanks to Cathy for all for that info!

Next Meeting: Sat, April 16 -- Arduino/Processing

Greetings, all.

In addition to the Spring Programming Contest that Crystal Hess is organizing on the date of our April meeting (Saturday, the 16th), we are scheduled to have a workshop, by me, on Arduino and Processing.

If you're not familiar with Arduino, it is an open-source hardware/software platform (a small, inexpensive micro-controller) for prototyping electronics projects. Processing is a related open-source software environment for teaching computing and making interactive graphics, art, and much more.

For this workshop, I would like to get RSVPs to gauge both interest and intention to attend and participate. I'll have to round up enough hardware and other assorted electronics parts and sensors for everyone to have a hands-on experience.

So please send me an email or leave a comment on this PSCSTA.org blog post if you intend to be there.

Also, if you are interested in OSPI clock hours for the workshop (3 hours), please let me. I won't bother doing the registration paperwork if no one needs it.

Many thanks.

.andy
ad _at_ goldensection -dot- cc

Next Meeting: Sat, Mar 19 -- Functional Programming

Greetings everyone.

This is a reminder that our next chapter meeting will be this coming Saturday, March 19, at the usual time and place (1:00 - 4:00 pm at the UW Paul Allen Center).

At this meeting, Mark Engleberg will discuss functional programming. He's going to be talking about the award-winning "Program by Design" curriculum.

Mark will discuss the specifics of how he implements the curriculum using the DrRacket IDE and the graphics and animation teachpacks. He will describe functional programming, and make a case for teaching functional programming first with beginning students.

But more importantly, Mark will explain the philosophical principles that underlie the curriculum. Even if you have no interest in teaching Racket or teaching functional programming, his goal is to change the way you think about teaching computer science, and leave you with concrete ideas that you can incorporate into your existing curriculum to achieve better results with your students.

Hope to see everyone there.

See this page for the full schedule of chapter meetings.