ICT LEARNING

NCSS CHALLENGE 2015

At the start of Term 3, several students from Year 7 to Year 11 signed up for the 5-week NCSS Challenge to study Python Programming. Unlike most subject competitions, the NCSS Challenge teaches students the material and then tests their ability to apply that material to solve a practical programming problem. Offered at three different levels of complexity, this year we had:

·  42 students enrol in the Beginner level

·  10 students enrol in the Intermediate level, and

·  1 student enrol in the Advanced level.

Of these 53 students, we had 34 receive awards - that is 64%. This is a tremendous effort! The awards received were:

·  12 Perfect Scores (10 Beginner and 2 Intermediate)

·  15 High Distinctions (11 Beginner and 4 Intermediate)

·  1 Distinction

·  2 Credits and

·  4 Merits

Congratulations to ALL students who made the 5-week commitment to take on the NCSS Challenge. Last year's results were good, this year's results were better. We hope for even greater results in 2016.

Grok On!

CODE.CLUB MEETS APP INVENTOR

Guest Visitor - Miguel from Cuenca, Spain

This term, the focus in Code.Club is using the online programming environment, AppInventor2 from MIT, to create apps that can be transferred and will run on Android tablets and phones.

So far, students have created apps that will play sounds when an image is clicked (for example pet the cat to make it meow - photo) or when the phone/tablet is shaken as well as an app for a Magic 8-Ball which can provide random responses to questions when the phone/tablet is clicked or shaken.

This week we had a special visitor to the class, Miguel the Bull, who was keenly interested in the programming environment demonstrated by Sasha and Caleb.

ROBOTICS CLUB

Thanks to Mr Liakakos, the Robotics Club is providing a fantastic opportunity for students to build and program their own robots created from our Mindstorms EV3 sets. Up until now, the Robotics club has been limited to students who have already studied Control Technology at Year 9, but it is now being opened for any student from Year 9 to Year 11 (although we know the Year 11s are focusing on upcoming exams at present).

Robotics Club meets in F01 on Tuesdays at lunchtime and anyone is welcome to come along and check it out.

Diana Hatch

ICT Learning Area Manager