The future could look so bright!
Today at Stony Point High School in Round Rock ~150 Area High School students took part in HP’s annual worldwide Code Wars programming contest. Teams of 1-3 from around the world use one computer and compete to write programs. Austin is one of 8 international locations hosting the contest.
Teams have 3 hours to complete as many of the 18 problems as they can. The problems that range in point value from 2 to 17. The more difficult the problem is, the more points the problem is worth. Once the team has a working program, the submit their code via a website that uploads the code and runs it to verify that it generates the correct output. They can work the problems in any order, so strategy is involved. Which problem should we work first? Should 2 of us work on one problem while the other research’s the next problem? New teams planned to start at the front and just work through them 1 by 1. More experienced had more elaborate strategies. There are 2 awards devisions, Advanced and Novice, but they all are given the same problems. The team that get’s the most points wins.
In the Austin ~35 area public, private, charter and home schools made up 60 teams. There were 2 teams that traveled to attend: one from Midland-Odessa, and one from Marietta, Georgia.
Problems below the Surface
These students are bright and ambitious, and their teachers are amazing. They did a fantastic job competing on the international stage.
The problem is that there are WAY too few of them.
In February 2015, Central Texas employers posted 7,400 computer science (CS)-related jobs. Yet nationally, CS is the only STEM discipline where high school enrollment declined between 1990 and 2009. (TCEA 2014). Locally enrollment has increased slightly, but still only 5% of the class of 2013 Central Texans report plans to study CS in college. (Ray Marshall Center 2014). In 2014, only 90 Texans passed Grades 8–12 computer science teacher cert exam. (SBEC 2014). So there are literally thousands of great paying CS related jobs in the area, and hundreds of students learning the tools of the trade. It’s a gross mis-match.
Why is participation so low? Image and awareness certainly play a part for the students. What is Computer Science? It’s a small group of nerdy people that site behind computers sipping mountain dew right cranking out code right? Wrong. Seriously wrong. Computer science is huge and touches virtually every individuals life and plays an integral roll in business. It’s dynamic team of designers, testers and programmers creating apps, websites and services. Anyone and everyone that has the desire can code.
The other problem is the lack of teachers. Faced with the choice of working in the thriving IT industry and struggling within the slow moving education system, it’s only the truly passionate teachers that step up to the challenge.
How can we make more students aware of the opportunity and get more teachers involved?
