At the CSTA Conference, Alfred Thompson sent this Twitter message.
Code Hunt contest for #CSTA14 attendees opens in 26 minutes. http://t.co/Ov7lWAWMAn Can you tell I’m ready? 🙂
— Alfred Thompson (@alfredtwo) July 14, 2014
Later, he blogged about his thoughts……My Big Learning at CSTA 2014 Day 1–Not From A Session
Based on his first quote, I headed over to the Code Hunt site and started poking around. It’s very intriguing. If you follow the link and end up at the CSTA contest, you’ll find that it’s closed. If that’s the case, click on “Change Zone” and navigate away.
You have your choice to play in Java or C#.
The game boils down to this…you’re given a section of code and output table.
“All” you have to do is look at the code that you’re given and modify it so that the expected result is the same as your result (based upon modifying the code).
It was great fun. You log in with a Microsoft or Yahoo! ID so that your attempts are captured. It’s addictive. I dropped by their booth, talked with the Microsoft folks and got a first hand demo. In addition to the puzzles that they present (and there are lots of them), teachers can create their own for their class.
How’d I do? Well, quite frankly, I wasn’t eligible since the instructions indicated that you had to be from one of the 50 states so that put a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm at the moment. There were a lot of really sharp people at the conference so I wouldn’t have stood a chance anyway had I been eligible.
Regardless, if you’re a Computer Science teacher or a programmer in a bit of a challenge for yourself or friends, make sure you check it out.
