SVVSD middle schoolers get chance to compete to crack the code

St Vrain Valley middle school students have a chance to crack the code this May.
The Innovation Center of St Vrain Valley Schools is hosting the Code Zone Challenge on May 22. Open to all SVVSD middle school students. The competition will be held in person from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. as COVID restrictions allow.
Students will form teams of two to three students from the same middle school. The sponsor for the team must be a representative from their school, ideally a teacher. To promote social distancing and address COVID restrictions, the competition is limited to 20 teams.
The student teams will have three hours to complete 30 coding problems that pose varying degrees of difficulty. The hardest problems have a higher point value and the team that gets the most correct answers within the time limit will be declared the winner.

“The questions were generated by the students and then reviewed by our team,” said Beth Cerrone, instructional cybersecurity and technology manager.

Teams are encouraged to bring their own laptop for the competition, though the Innovation Center will have laptops available to loan to students. Students will be using the Python 3 coding language for the competition. 

Python is a computer programming language typically taught in SVVSD because it is considered one of the easiest coding languages to learn, according to iDTech.

The landing page for the challenge has sets of practice questions available. Students have also been using a coding educational suite called CodeHS in their classes and after school practices, according to Cerrone.
After the end of the competition, there will be a guest speaker — yet to be announced. Awards and raffle prizes will wrap up the event.
Some of the prizes include an Apple Pencil, a Sphero robotics kit and an Oculus Quest 2, a virtual reality gaming system.
Interested middle school students need a written permission slip from their parents, available on the Code Zone website.