Continuing the theme from yesterday’s blog post, Upcoming OCSTA Training Events and Workshops, I think it might be good to provide a similar update about upcoming OCSTA and partner events and workshops for students.  As mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, the 2017 High School Programming Contest will be held on Saturday, March 18th at the George Fox campus in Newberg, OR.  

The next big OCSTA sponsored student event will be the Oregon Game Project Challenge (OGPC) Main Event on Saturday, April 8th at Western Oregon University in Monmouth.  OGPC is the only state-wide game programming competition for middle and high school students in Oregon. Students team create computer games around a socially responsible theme, which for this season is “Space Race.” Registration for the main event is $50/team and will open as we get closer to the event.  In the meantime, coaches do need to register their teams using the Team Management System (TMS) site. Coaches also need to approve members being added to a team, though you can delegate this access by setting one or more student members as the “Student Lead.”  This marks the 10th year of OGPC and we expect a very well organized and highly attended event.  If you are teacher or adult mentor working with middle and/or high school students and have an interest in video game design and development, it’s not too late to create a team and be part of this amazing event!  [Update: here’s  an OGPC Flier. Feel free to download and share]

If you are or know a high school student who is highly motivated by their interest in the field of computer science, then take a look at the NW Advanced Programming Workshop (NWAPW).  The NWAPW is a three-week, intensive, project-based workshop for high school students who are serious about programming and can successfully program in Java or C++ at the level of Advanced Placement Computer Science or higher.  2016 was the 1st year for this workshop.  Jason Galbraith, OCSTA instructor and one of the NWAPW’s current faculty, has a NWAPW page which provides details and links to some last year’s projects. This year, the  NWAPW will run from July 25 through August 11 at Portland State University. In order to attract the best students there is no cost to attend the NWAPW. However, student must be nominated by an approved CS teacher or mentor.  Nominations can be initiated here.

That’s it for now, but information about events and workshops of interest to the OCSTA educator and student community will be posted to our blog as we discover them. 🙂