ICT

APP INVENTORS

The Year 9 Code Class have been using our new Android tablets to create some simple Android Apps with App Inventor.

App Inventor is a free online resource from MIT University which allows students to create apps with a simple block-based coding language.

If you want to try out App Inventor, come along to Code Club on Tuesday lunchtimes in A3.

BEBRAS CHALLENGE

The Bebras Australia Computational Thinking Challenge started in 2014 to enable Australian primary and secondary school students to look at the area of computational thinking in a fun and problem-orientated way. ‘Bebras’ is the Lithuanian word for ‘Beaver’ and this animal was chosen as the Bebras mascot because of its hard working and persistent nature. In 2014, almost one million students from all over the world took part in the Bebras Challenge. In the first challenge for 2016, almost 19,000 Australian students have competed in the first Bebras Challenge for the year and a large number of these were from McKinnon Secondary College. At McKinnon, Year 7 and 8 students were enrolled for the Bebras challenge as part of their IT or Maths curriculum. In addition, some Year 9 and 10 IT classes and Control Tech classes also took part in the challenge with some excellent results.

The problems are set at various Year Levels and within each Year Level the problems are categorised into levels of difficulty, with A being the easiest and C being the most difficult. Students are awarded marks for getting the questions correct - six points for Category A, nine points for Category B and twelve points for Category C. Once signed up with Bebras, the students log in and are given 45 minutes to work through the problems before the timer locks them out.

The following students performed extremely well and are worthy of mention. It also worth noting that the students who gained a High Distinction received the highest mark available - 135 out of 135 which is outstanding.