Coding Quest, a programming competition for secondary students

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Coding Quest, a programming competition for secondary students

Hi all. I'd love to share and get your thoughts on Coding Quest ( https://codingquest.io ), a programming competition I have created as a personal side-project which is now into its second year. The 2023 competition is coming up! It is 10 days of problems from Monday 6 March to Friday 17 March. Last year I had over 30 and ~250 students participate. I'd love to have double the participation rate this year! The original inspiration was heavily drawn from Advent of Code (which I love doing every year!) but I wanted something that was a little more accessible to my students so they could enjoy the fun of something similar. Also, being a teacher, I wanted the skills required by the competition problems to align with those taught in my classes, and so Coding Quest was born. As a general rule I aim for week 1 problems to be achievable by Key Stage 4 CompSci students (Grade 9/10, 15/16 years old), and week 2 will progress into the skills taught in the final two years of school (A Levels, IB Diploma, AP Computer Science etc). Students compete for positions within an internal school leaderboard, and additionally each school competes against other schools for a bit of light-hearted rivalry (which school gets to brag at having the most hot-shot programmers?!). The overwhelming emphasis, however, is on the learning experience and maximum participation. Students will be able to download an individualised certificate of achievement upon completion of the event. Example: https://codingquest.io/certificate-example.pdf If you are a teacher, or you know a teacher who might be interested in using it - It is recommended that teachers sign-in to register their school prior to promoting the event with students. That will allow the school team to be listed and available for students to see and join when they sign up. When you are ready to invite your students, there is a promotional poster you can use here: https://codingquest.io/codingquest_poster_2023.pdf There is no cost. This is a self-funded personal project which I have unleashed onto the world. The problems from 2022 remain available for students to use as practice in the lead up to the event. I'd love to know what you think.