openSUSE:GCI digest 2011

Google Code-in 2011 digest

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Digest is meant as help for busy people considering to become mentors.
It is GCI in a few words without pretension to be comprehensive, so if something is not clear read pages with more details.

Categories

Google published following categories for Code-in:

• Code: Tasks related to writing or refactoring code
• Documentation: Tasks related to creating/editing documents
• Outreach: Tasks related to community management and outreach/marketing
• Quality Assurance: Tasks related to testing and ensuring code is of high quality
• Research: Tasks related to studying a problem and recommending solutions
• Training: Tasks related to helping others learn more
• Translation: Tasks related to localization
• User Interface: Tasks related to user experience research or user interface design and interaction

Task creation

Any task should be created with this in mind:

• GCI Admin and Mentor Information, and
• Google melange with rules and details.

In other words:

• Tasks must be suitable for 13-17 years old participants that have no educational background to solve complex tasks.
• It must be possible to accomplish one or more tasks from Nov 21st 2011 to Jan 16th 2012. This includes:
  • time to analyze problem, and contact mentor for details
  • learn about tools and methods used to solve similar problems, and
  • actually solve a problem.

One very useful resources for task ideas can be found at Junior jobs. However it is not good for tasks that suit GCI participants, as described in above digest. First and foremost it must be split in tasks that 13-17 years old students can work with.

Task definitions

This 4 points are mandated by Google.

• identify the problem
• give general background
• set time frame to complete
• set requirements to consider task completed

Difficulty assessment

Tasks are grouped in 3 levels by difficulty:

• Easy = 1 point to participant
• Medium = 2 points
• Difficult = 4 points

Participating projects are responsible to set difficulty level.
When doing that have in mind that last year top ranked participants made around 300 points in 2 months, which makes 5 or more points a day. See:

• Email listing 2010 top achivers.

For details on this see again GCI Admin and Mentor Information.