CHALLENGE BUILDER COMPETITION

CodeMonkey, a leading game-based learning platform, teaches students eight years and older the fundamental principles of computer programming. Founded in 2014, CodeMonkey products are designed to maximize engagement and user experience to introduce students to foundational computer programming skills. Using real programming languages and scalability for all learning environments, CodeMonkey provides a turnkey solution for educators by offering basic training, management and reporting tools, automatic grading and detailed tutorials for teachers and real time feedback for students.

Challenge Builder is a creativity platform that comes with Coding Adventure.
Challenge Builder allows for students and teachers to create their own CodeMonkey Coding Adventure challenges, using CoffeeScript, a real programming language.
Through creating challenges, children practice logical reasoning, algorithms, creativity and computer programming.
Teachers can create challenges for students to solve as extra work or to assess their understanding in a specific concept.

Read more here.

This Design challenge is open to CodeMonkey users from the USA with an active subscription.

Stage 1: 

May 12, 2020- Submissions Open

June 2, 2020- Last day to submit your challenge through our Google Form.

Stage 2: 

June 15, 2020 – CodeMonkey will choose the Top 10 challenges from each grade level

June 15-19, 2020 – Vote for your favorite challenges!

Stage 3:

June 22, 2020 – Final winners from each category will be announced

Users can log in using a desktop computer, laptop, Chromebook or tablet. An active internet connection is required.

No. If you have an active CodeMonkey subscription then you can participate in the competition.

Currently, Challenge Builder Competition is only available for users from the United States. We hope to be able to create similar competitions for other countries.

Round 1 of competition: Top challenges from each grade level will get a CodeMonkey themed swag bag!

Round 2 of competition: Top 3 challenges from each grade level, who will get the most votes, will win an Amazon gift card. 

1st place of each grade level will receive $50 Amazon gift card.
2nd place will receive $40 Amazon gift card.
3rd place will receive $30 Amazon gift card.

Winners’ guardians will be contacted for gift cards details or shipping address details. 

Please follow the instructions.

The following users can access the Challenge Builder:
1. A student user who is in a classroom with access to the challenge. The teacher would first need to make sure that the Challenge Builder activity is assigned to the classroom.
2. A child user with an active Home plan.

To access the Challenge Builder, follow these steps:
1. Login to your CodeMonkey account.
2. Click on ‘Courses’ on the right-side menu.
3. Scroll all the way down.
4. Under ‘Creativity’, click on the Challenge Builder.
5. A window will pop-up. Click on ‘Start Coding’ to create your own challenge!

In order for your students to access the Challenge Builder, you would first need to assign the activity to the classroom. Here’s how.

If you are a parent with an active Home plan, your child would need to login to their account and then they would be able to access the Challenge Builder through the ‘Courses’ section.

In case your challenge did not follow the Community Guidelines, you will see a message stating “Denied – did not meet community guidelines”. CodeMonkey will not approve challenges that include inappropriate language and/or personal information, such as: full name, phone number, email, address, social network handles, etc.

In this case, you will need to redo your challenge. You can either create a new challenge or edit your original challenge. You will be able to locate it under ‘My Creations’.

In order to locate challenges you have created:
1. Login to your CodeMonkey account.
2. Click on ‘My Creations’ on the right-side menu.
3. Scroll all the way down.
4. Under ‘My Challenges’ you will be able to locate the challenges you have created.
5. Under ‘My Published Challenges’ you will be able to locate challenges you have submitted to Discover. Until your challenge is approved, it will show “Pending Approval”. Once the challenge is approved, the “Pending Approval” text will be removed.
6. In case your challenge did not follow the Community Guidelines, you will see a message stating “Denied – did not meet community guidelines”.

Follow these steps in order to unpublish your challenge:

1. Login to your CodeMonkey account.
2. Click on ‘My Creations’ on the right-side menu. 
3. Scroll all the way down.
4. Under ‘My Published Challenges’, locate the challenge you would like to unpublish and click on the down facing arrow.
5. Click on ‘Unpublish’.
6. In order to publish the challenge again, you would need to go to the original challenge (under ‘My Creations’) and redo the publish process.

Once you have created your challenge and have submitted your challenge to Discover, you would need to fill out our competition Google form. You will be able to locate the relevant form in your grade level full guidelines document.

Top 10 challenges from each category will be chosen by the CoeMonkey team. We will check whether the challenges followed competition requirements and give extra points for creativity.

Top 3 challenges from each category will be chosen based on users’ votes.

When we want other objects (characters) other than the monkey to perform actions such as step or turn, we use the object’s name a dot and the function name. For example – turtle.step or crocodile.turn

See for example – challenge 13.

A simple loop is a sequence of instructions that repeats a specified number of times.

See for example – challenge 21.

A “for” loop is a loop that is used when we have a collection of objects (array) and we want to repeat the same actions to each one of the items in the collection.

See for example – challenge 61.

A variable is like a storage unit: we store data in it, and we use it only when we need it. We assign values to variables and can change these values throughout the code.​​

See for example – challenge 31 and challenge 48.

A function is a set of instructions that performs a specific task. The computer will only execute the function when we use it in our code.

See for example – challenge 80.

The “until” loop runs until a specific condition is met. The computer

checks the condition each time at the beginning of the loop. If the answer is no (false), the loop will keep going. It will only stop once the answer is yes (true).

See for example – challenge 91.

“if” and “else” are used when we want our code to decide what to do based on a certain condition. In case the condition is yes (true), the code under the “if” is executed. In case the condition wasn’t met, meaning it is no (false), the code under the “else” is executed.

See for example – challenge 120.