Earl Bergquist – PSCSTA

Spring 2014 Programming Contest Report

Earl Bergquist — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 22:29:00 +0000

We had about 145 students in 50 teams representing 22 schools join us Saturday for our programming contest hosted and sponsored by the Living Computer Museum! We had 5 schools registered with 5 Teams each: Cleveland, Garfield, Interlake, Kamiak & Tahoma High Schools and 4 Teams from Roosevelt HS. Thank you to all the teachers who helped promote and coordinate students for our event. The contest was exciting and close with only 15 points and 16 minutes separating our 3rd and 4th place Novice and Advanced teams, respectively.

Congratulations to all of our participants! Here are our top winners:

Advanced 1st: William, Rowan & Nathan of Garfield HS”s team Dawgbotics
Advanced 2nd: Cillian & Emma of Roosevelt HS’s team ‘); DROP TABLE TeamNames;–
Advanced 3rd: Tianyi Cao of Hazen HS team 21st

Advanced 1st

Advanced 2nd

Advanced 3rd

Novice 1st: Devan, Danny & Evan of Kamiak HS team Helm’s Deep
Novice 2nd: Jason, Novin, & Mark of Meadowvale HS’s “Most Significant Team”
Novice 3rd: Parker, Sudharsan, & Arjun Narayan of Skyline HS’ team Megatron

Novice 1st

Novice 2nd

Novice 3rd

Having the contest at the Living Computer Museum was real treat, allowing students to check out working computers from the past 50 years. The LCM made accommodations for our teams well and generously provided great snacks, pizza lunch, T-Shirts & Sweatshirts, plus incredible raffle prizes (including an X-Box One) for our students – much thanks to their staff, coordinated by Justin Spielman.

Special thanks to our precision volunteer judges from local computer companies, fearlessly led by Ebe Janchivdorj, and our incredible speaker, Maya Cakmak of UW’s Human-Robot Interaction department. Key members of the PSCSTA made the contest possible: Lauren Bricker coordinating team registration, Brett Wortzman assembling the contest questions & judges, Andy Davidson as our photographer & arranging our speaker, Susan Evans helping with set up, recycling, redesigning our PSCSTA website, plus several members helping out during the day. All of these contributions were invaluable to making this event a huge success. Again thank you all so much.

Please share results and pictures with your students!
– Contest Results PDF
– Photos! (on Flickr, by Andrew Davidson)
– Contest Problems & Data: Spring 2014 Contest Problems.zip

FYI: Part 2 of the Paul Allen Computing Challenge notices have been sent out to individual teams and their teachers.

Cheers,
Earl Bergquist
PSCSTA Vice President & Spring Contest Coordinator

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Spring 2013 Programming Contest Report

Earl Bergquist — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 20:47:00 +0000

We had 100 students in 40 teams representing 19 schools join us Saturday for our programming contest hosted and sponsored Amazon.com!

Dozens of teachers and industry volunteers made this possible by judging problems, registering students, trekking up & down stairs passing out food & T-shirts, hunting for power cables and more! Special thanks to our precision judges and Amazon.com staff: coordinator, Elton Pinto and speaker, Gus Lopez. All of your contributions were invaluable to making this event a big success. Again thank you all so much.

Congratulations to all of our participants! Here are our top winners:

Novice 1st: Rebecca W., Ryan M., & Franklin S. from Garfield High School
Novice 2nd: Nicholas LS. & Akshay S. from Lakeside High School
Novice 3rd: Andy C. & Paul S. from STEM High School (LWSD)

Advanced 1st: Colin W. from Tahoma High School
Advanced 2nd: William B. & Ben F. from Garfield & Nova High Schools
Advanced 3rd: Alex E. who is home schooled.

Top schools represented were Issaquah & Garfield (5 teams each), Kings (4 Teams), and Bonnie Lake & Bothel (4 Teams each). Thank you to all the teachers who helped promote our event.

Please share results and pictures with your students!
– Contest Results PDF
– Photos!
– Contest Problems & Data: PSCSTA Spring 2012 Contest.zip

In addition, proceeds from our contests will be shared by awarding two $500 PSCSTA scholarships available to students who have participated in at least one of PSCSTA’s computing events and want to go beyond their current understanding of computing. Please pass this announcement to your participating students.

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Saturday April 27th Programming Contest is now taking Wait List Registrations

Earl Bergquist — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 05:26:00 +0000

In the first day, we have maxed out the number of teams for the Programming Contest! But we encourage any students interested to register to be placed on our wait list (here). If teams cancel or fail to have their payment received by April 11th, we will invite teams to join the competition by email in the order they are received. Good luck!

For those Registered teams and their Teachers/Advisors:
– Make sure that the $30 registration fee is mailed in early so it will be received by Thursday, 11th April. Please send checks made out to PSCSTA with team member names to:    PSCSTA (Puget Sound Computer Science Teachers Association)
    4616 25th AVE NE #573
    SEATTLE, WA 98105
– The competition will be held at the same Amazon.com location as last year:
Amazon.com Dawson North
345 Boren Avenue North
Seattle, WA 98109
   – Street or lot parking is available in the neighborhood.
   – Enter the north building from the south side under the sky bridge.

Full details at the Programming Contest tab above. And contact the PSCSTA Planning Team at pscsta-planning@googlegroups.com if you have any questions.

Upcoming events:

AWEsome Evening Celebrating Women in Engineering Monday, April 1st. details linked here
CS Review day at UW for AP CS and UW in the High School CSE 142 students on Saturday May 4th 1pm – 4pm. Details and registration here
AppDay is Thursday, May 23rd at Rainier Beach HS, details & registration at AppDay.org
CodeDay Seattle is May 25th-26th, details at seattle.codeday.org

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Programming Contest Details and our Next Meeting is Saturday, March 23rd

Earl Bergquist — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 02:24:00 +0000

Registration for the April 27th PSCSTA Programming Contest will open Monday, March 25th at 9:30am. We are limited to 30 teams this Spring, so only the first 30 registered teams can attend, any thereafter will be notified and placed on a wait list in case the first teams have not paid by Thursday, April 11th – after that wait list teams will be invited accordingly. Mark your calendar and prepare your students for registration. Cost is $30 per team, and a number of need-based scholarships are available. The latest details and the registration link will appear on our Programming Contest tab .

Next PSCSTA Meeting:

Topic: SICSCE Report and Exploring CS & CS Principles Update hosted by Stuart Reges
Date: Saturday, March 23rd, 2013
New Time: 10am – Noon followed by Noon – 1pm socializing & Networking
Place: UW, Paul Allen Center for CSE (Directions & Parking)

A report on what was going on at the annual SIGCSE convention held in early March along with the latest news about the two courses being proposed for high school computer science (Exploring CS and CS Principles).

Other Upcoming events:

AWEsome Evening Celebrating Women in Engineering Monday, April 1st. details linked here
AppDay is Thursday, 23rd May at Rainier Beach HS, details & registration at AppDay.org

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CodeDay Seattle is this weekend, Sat 16th Feb

Earl Bergquist — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 01:45:00 +0000

CodeDay is a great opportunity for high school students to apply their programming skills and learn to make games & apps with fellow students in the Seattle area. PSCSTA officer, Hélène Martin will be speaking and this event is organized by two Garfield HS Students! Here’s the Details:

Come to CodeDay Seattle this Presidents Day weekend! Pitch ideas, form teams, and build amazing apps and games as quickly as possible!

CodeDay Seattle is a 24 hour hackathon for students. It’s a great opportunity to meet other students, learn new technologies, and have an incredibly fun weekend. We’ve lined up some fantastic speakers and workshops, and have great prizes from our awesome sponsors.

The event begins at noon on Saturday the 16th and goes until noon on Sunday the 17th, hosted at the HUB Seattle. Registration is only $20, and food and drinks are provided. All you need to bring is a laptop and your enthusiasm.

Find out more and register at seattle.codeday.org .

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2012 – 2013 Meeting Schedule

Earl Bergquist — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 20:17:00 +0000

Dear chapter members,

At our August meeting, we developed a plan for this year’s chapter meetings. It promises to be another great year of CS education discussions.

As usual, the meetings will be on Saturdays, hosted by the UW CSE Department in the lovely 6th Floor Commons room of the Paul Allen Center. However we have changed the start of our meetings to 10am so they do not take up the middle of your Saturday. The new meeting time is 10am to Noon for presentations and then Noon till about 1pm for socialization and networking.

The detailed schedule is posted on the chapter website (www.pscsta.org) under the Meetings tab. A summary version is below. BLUE items are student event days, rather than teacher meetings. We also have a Google Calendar version on the Meetings web page.

Hope to see everyone at the September 22nd and other meetings.

Cheers,

Earl B.

Sep 22, 2012: Attracting and Retaining Students, Ashley Myers

Oct 20, 2012: Processing, Hélène Martin

Nov 17, 2012: Mobile Device Programming, Earl Bergquist

Dec 15, 2012: WINTER PROGRAMMING CONTEST, PS CSTA Team

Jan 12, 2013: Building a CS Program of Study: Beyond Intro & AP CS, Brett Wortzman

Feb 9, 2013: STEM Out!, PS CSTA Team

Mar 23, 2013: SICSCE Report and Exploring CS & CS Principles Update, Stuart Reges

Apr 27, 2013: SPRING PROGRAMMING CONTEST, PS CSTA Team

May 18, 2013: Physical Computing, Hélène Martin

Jun 22, 2013: End of Year Wrap Up & Social, All

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