Computational Thinking 2009 Chronicle

Frisco H. S. Raccoons design
"Space Jam"

Travis H. S. takes second place

The fourth Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) high school computer science contest, Computational Thinking 2009, was held on October 3rd at the H.R. Bright Building on the Texas A&M campus. Fourteen Texas high school student teams were presented with a CompThink challenge designed by Dr. Yoonsuck Choe, CSE Associate Professor specializing in computational neuroscience. The student teams were asked to design a creative contraption made of everyday objects to perform a simple computational task, utilizing fundamental concepts from computer science. Each team chose a particular theme to integrate their design, such as medieval castle, video arcade, etc.

Winners: Panther's Algorithm
from North Crowley H. S.

Wakeland H. S.'s Red Team
at lunch

The teams spent five hours in classrooms and labs decomposing the problem and designing a contraption that will solve the problem, and finally construct a poster and prepare for the presentation. When lunch was delivered to the teams, many of the students multi-tasked and continued to work on their staging for the finals, which were held in Bright's Frank J. Malina '34 Auditorium. During the planning stage, the teams were visited at some point by the judges and asked to explain their models. This helped the judges get a better grasp of the projects, learn about the design process, and observe the team dynamics. The final demonstrations were lively, informative, imaginative and fun. Peaster High School showed how an algorithm of castle pulleys would prevent a fire breathing dragon from accessing the castle.

Winning third place with an industrial theme was Wakeland High School's Red Team. For their school they won an HP Officejet 6500 All-in-One Printer and $25 Best Buy gift certificates for each member of the team. Second place went to Travis High School (Ft. Bend ISD) with a medieval theme. Travis received an HP Photosmart Premium (printer) with Fax for the school and $50 Best Buy gift certificates for the team. The winning team, North Crowley High School's Panther's Algorithm, whose design theme was "Classic Arcade: Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Tron, Pole Position" received a Kodak EasyShare digital camera for its school and earned a $100 Best Buy gift certificate for the team members. Random drawings for USB flash drives went to 12 of the students attending; others won laptop computer bags, one ipod nano, and two ipod shuffles.

A list of participating high school teams/sponsors, judges and CSE staff and students can be found at http://www.cse.tamu.edu/compthink2009/listing. Computational Thinking 2009 — including brunch, lunch, snacks, T-shirts, and prizes — was sponsored by Chevron, an Industrial Affiliates Program member, and organized by CSE's Program Assistant Ms. Theresa Roberts.