Confident individuals and learners enjoying success at the IAPS Young Programmers Competition 2023

At the end of week 8, we traveled up to Nairobi for the IAPS Young Programmers Competition. We traveled up on Thursday by SGR and stayed the night at Braeburn Garden Estate. This meant we could arrive bright and early the next day at Peponi House Prep School, ready for an exciting day of fun computing activities. We took two teams with us, our under 11s from primary, and the under 13s from secondary. Each team would face a number of challenging tasks throughout the day.

Our under 11 team, consisting of Nuriyah and Aaryan from Year 5, and Matis from Year 6, had a Coding challenge in Scratch, a Design challenge in Kodu, and a Computational Thinking challenge. I am delighted to say that they won gold medals in the Computational Thinking challenge where they had to use their knowledge of cryptography and code cracking skills to decipher a secret message.

Our under 13 team, made up of Peter and Denis from Year 7, and Tung’a from Year 8, also had to deal with three challenges, a Design challenge, a coding Challenge in Python, and a Webpage Design challenge using HTML. I am happy to say that this team was awarded silver medals for the Design Challenge, in which they had to use 3D design software to create a digital model of a birdhouse.

I must say a big thank you to our TA, Ms Janet, for doing a fantastic job in helping to look after our team and supporting and encouraging them throughout the event. Our teams, both under 11 and under 13, worked hard throughout a very busy day. They were focused, positive and very supportive of each other, showing both individual strength and great teamwork. My expectations for the day were that our students should give their very best, learn something new and enjoy the day, and in this respect, they did not disappoint me. We should be proud of each and every one of them.

Mr Took

Computing Coordinator