Five Jerudong International School (JIS) students recently achieved Distinctions in the annual Canadian Computing Challenge competing against 4000 students world wide! What was more remarkable was the fact that one of the students is presently in Year 6 at JIS, competing with much older students!
Hosted by Canada’s University of Waterloo’s The Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing, the Canadian Computing Competition (CCC) is a fun challenge for secondary school students with an interest in programming. It is an opportunity for students to test their capabilities in designing, understanding and implementing algorithms.
The three A Level students, Bruneians Atip Adimas, Ethan Cheam, Kartikeya Aneja (India), IGCSE student Yahya Husain and Year 6, Richard Zou had 3 hours to complete and answer 5 questions. All 12 competitors from JIS had to programme using the Python programming language. Questions included basic algorithms (e.g., sorting, searching) and more advanced algorithms (e.g., careful counting, some mathematical reasoning).
Mr Simon Carter, Head of Computing at JIS commented, ‘The Canadian Computing Competition is a seriously demanding and rigorous international challenge, which we would like to see as a standard part of our Y12 Computer Science calendar. It is exciting to see younger students also taking up the challenge and responding so well.’
One thing we have all learned from COVID is how invaluable computers are. I’m delighted to see these five students participating and doing so well in this international competition. I look forward to seeing their future prowess in a world increasingly reliant upon the digital economy.
Mr Nicholas Sheehan, JIS Principal
Further Information about this competition: https://cemc.uwaterloo.ca/contests/computing.html
JIS Senior student achieves 13th in the world in Oxford University Computing Challenge
Jerudong International School is thrilled to announce that a JIS senior student has made it to the final round of the prestigious global Oxford University Computing Challenge (OUCC) for the second year in a row. Year 11 student, Ahmad Jamsari achieved 13th place from the many thousands of competitors in the world!
Computing is a core subject at Jerudong International School for the 240 students in Years 7 & 8. In Years 9 and above, they can choose to continue to study Computing as an optional subject.
To be able to compete in the OUCC, all the JIS Year 7 and 8 students together with the students in Years 9-13 who are studying Computing as part of their IGCSE, A Level or IB curriculum took a one hour, online test – the UK Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge in their lessons. This test is a set of challenges which students complete online. At this stage, it does not involve any programming skills. Students from more than 50 countries participated in this event.
The top 10% of students in each age group from the BEBRAS Challenge, were then invited to the First Round of the Oxford University Computing Challenge. Seven students from JIS were invited to compete. This first round required the students to solve problems using their computer programming skills.
The top 20 students in each age group, world-wide, were then invited to compete in the second and final round. Ahmad Jamsari was required to complete a one hour, online test using his programming skills to complete an increasingly complex set of challenges using block-based programming and Python.
Simon Carter, Head of Computing, lauded their achievements. “It is great to see these developing programmers challenging themselves and getting rewarded for the time they have spent developing and practising their skills.”
Nicholas Sheehan, JIS Principal, commented “To have achieved 13th place from over 250,000 students globally bears testimony to both the calibre of student that Ahmad is, and also the quality of teaching in the Maths and Computer Science Faculties here at JIS. Our sincere congratulations to Ahmad – both JIS and his family are enormously proud of him!”
