Pakuranga College Computer Studies teacher, Michael McLeod, has claimed 1st place in the teacher division of the global coding competition, Coding Quest.
The annual competition attracts schools from South-East Asia, North America, Europe, and the Middle East each year, but for the second year running, Pakuranga College has been the only New Zealand school to compete.
This may have something to do with the time the coding challenges are released – 1.00am New Zealand time!
Mr McLeod explains, “Schools are ranked firstly by how many challenges they complete because it is an achievement to solve some of the challenges at all. However, how quickly challenges are solved is also factored into rankings. Fortunately, time to complete is only a tiebreaker. We obviously don’t encourage students to be up at one in the morning, but it does make it harder to get a great ranking.”
This year, Pakuranga College finished 15 out of 198 schools, with eight students from the college competing.
There are 10 coding challenges to solve during the quest, with a new one released every 24 hours. Each subsequent problem is more difficult than the last, requiring greater coding abilities to complete.
“This year we had three students complete all the challenges, William Leader in Year 12 and two amazing Year 9 students, Liam Yang and Josh Rosser,” says Mr Mcleod.
Of his own feat, Mr McLeod is modest, after placing 1st in the teacher division, where he competed against 47 other teachers, only nine of whom solved all the challenges.
“I prefer to celebrate all improvement rather than only excellence, so I don’t often go in for competitions. But I gave this one a go so I could see what our students could get from it and was surprised to find myself near the top of the leaderboard, making me curious about how long I could stay there. By the end, I solved all the challenges over a couple of hours faster than the runner-up.
“I’m not sure I’d wake up that early again for it, but there are other coding competitions that take place throughout the year that come out at better times for our students. Anyone interested in challenging themselves can join our Coding Club that meets most Mondays.”
Congratulations Mr McLeod!
