School - Contribute

New to Programming and want to test the waters?

We need to reach out to schools and students, make them understand the significance of programming and show them the benefits and opportunities that come with it. Awareness is the most important issue that we believe we need to tackle. And, we realize that we cannot do this all by ourselves. We will do whatever it takes and we will need your help too.

If you share the same dream and if you are willing to contribute some of your time, together, we’re assured that we can do this.

You can contribute by doing any one (or more) of the following:

You can start in as small a way as sharing few links on your social media profiles to promote this initiative. Social media in current times is one of the fastest modes of sharing information across. You can like and promote our Facebook Page, to stay updated on all the latest happenings and also join the Facebook group to share your updates and queries.

You can send tweets using #CodeChefLunchTime, #CodeChefForSchools our ways for any assistance you need.

You can also share useful resources about programming that help to get started to competitive programming and we will add them to our Getting Started Page. If you are creative, you can also create promotional material and share it with us and we will use that to promote this initiative.

You can also create awareness about the upcoming LunchTime contests on any other platform that you are aware of.

And, if you have any other ideas you can always write them to us and we’ll provide all the necessary assistance to get them implemented.

Let us go back to our schools. And this time around, with a little more responsibility than swinging the cricket bat at the school ground or eating the delicious parathas from friend’s lunch box. You’ll be talking to the principal and the computer teacher. You will be required to tell them how awesome computer programming is and asking them to conduct a lecture or a workshop for students where they can get started on CodeChef.

These are the following things that can objectively be done:

Putting up posters about the initiative on the School’s notice board and promoting LunchTime among the school students. Find more about LunchTime here.
Request your school principal to encourage students to develop interest towards programming. It might include making regular announcement in assembly, sending emails, or circulars to the students.
Organizing a small workshop for the students, where
- You tell them about programming.
- Show them the Code.org video.
- Introduce them to the world of competitive programming and online judge.
- Tell them what the IOI is and how to get there.
- How they can make use CodeChef to learn and practice.
- Tell them about the Go For Gold For Schools program.
- Guide them to solve at least one problem on CodeChef to get them started.
Identify a student as the school representative and start a campus chapter in that school.
Help organize CodeChef contests in the school and mentor the students if and when they need your help.
You can visit other schools in your near vicinity to initiate the program there as well.

We all in one way or the other must be connected to one person who’s studying in middle/high school. You need to identify one such student. It may be in your circle, in your extended family circle, in your extended friends’, brothers’ or sisters’ or any other relative’s circle. You may not need to look a lot further than your own family. The idea is to get one student and start mentoring him/her.

Once you identify the chosen one, you can start mentoring. As a part of mentoring the following things could be done:

Tell them what is computer programming. You can show them all the awesome things that they can do on a computer if they know programming. Show them the Code.org video.
Make them aware of the IOI and other aspects of competitive programming. How a good performance at the IOI can also contribute to making a good career.
Get them started on CodeChef. Make them solve at least one problem on CodeChef and make them participate in LunchTime.
Tell them which problem to start solving first guiding them to higher levels. Provide them all the necessary links, tutorials, or useful resources that might help them excel in the field of programming.

Mentorship is the surest way to make a big impact. Start small - start with one. If you decide to wear the mentorship hat, do let us know the CodeChef user handle of the person so that both you and us can track the progress of the individual.

We have a plethora of problems on CodeChef. For some of them we have the tutorials, for some we don’t. We call them editorials. There are some editorials which school students may not find very easy to understand. You will find all the existing editorials for the problems here: https://discuss.codechef.com/tags/editorials

This is where you can help. If you want to write an editorial for a problem where no editorial exists or if you want to improve an existing editorial, you can do so.