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Google Summer of Code Extends to Highschoolers
phobonetik writes "Building on three successful years of engaging University students with over one hundred open source projects, the Google Summer of Code program is being complemented with the Google Highly Open Participation Contest, launched today.
Running initially as a pilot involving 10 open source projects, the contest is open to any student enrolled in highschool education. Students choose from a list of several hundred predetermined tasks that improve the open source project, and get paid small sums for their successful completion. At the end of the contest (4th Feb 2008), each of the ten open source projects nominate their best contributor, who wins a grand prize." I wish there would have been something like this when I was in high school... I wonder how great my BBS door games would have been if there was a chance of getting cash and trips.
This doesn't apply to "highschoolers" outside the USA?
Honestly, how many Google stories in one day? One week? Perhaps we can do like mailing lists and distil it down to a single weekly summary?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Thank god. If they had their own projects to work on, I don't know if I could handle any more "technology advancements" to MySpace.
Not that I ever lurk there, you know...
extended to all lifeforms. see you there?
Just curious, what door games did you write?
I call first turns on BRE, L.O.R.D., and Swords of Chaos, Usurper, etc..
Oblig Sov quip.
In Soviet Russia, The BBSs Call YOU!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
... when I was in highschool. I ended up putting off my CS education until now (20 years later) because after I'd maxed out the available options in highschool (and they were really good too...) I couldn't bear *repeating* it all in college and ended up dropping out. I'm sure I'm not alone in this sentiment. Something like this would probably have helped catapult me past that point and into a real career in CS... where I've belonged this whole time.
;-)
Granted there were opportunities even then (class of '88 here). My first two jobs were computer oriented. One was teaching a introductory programming class at the local library and the other was writing some code for the school district (got $600 for that!!). But even so, the opportunities were few and far between. The result is that I'm now fully qualified to operate the bar at the engineering/cs dept mixers
man, I feel like mold.
Hmm...
Child labor issues?
It's nice if you are a highschool kid and can't come up with anything interesting on your own...but it's not the greatest thing for everyone.
Maybe Slashdot would not have been created if you could have repeatedly performed many menial tasks for small pay?
This is just another way for a large company, Google here, to take advantage of open source and profit from the work of others.
Its winter here in the northern hemisphere. In less than a montht it will be the shortest day.
So is this the southern hemisphere version, or are they predicting summer will have already shifted around to February due to global warming?
Google wins again--they are so danged smart. They're not only getting a bunch of highschoolers into coding but they're orienting them to like Google. As if that were not already a done deal.
Let's hope someone mods your post up because in abbreviated form it looks like a bad pickup line
I can finally use my 16-year-old LAMP skills on a Google project. I think I've gone to heaven.
So, is Google spreading their "don't be evil" method of spying on US citizens to a new generation? Time will tell!
I'm guessing they are looking for something to buy for $300 Million which will not make any money. Who says the dot-bomb ever ended?
Organizations based in the countries Iran, Syria, Cuba, Sudan, North Korea and Myanmar (Burma), with whom we are prohibited by U.S. law from engaging in commerce, are ineligible to participate. Mentoring organizations that are taking part in Google Summer of Code 2007 may add additional controls on which students may participate in the program under their auspices. Also if you look iranian, or have an iranian sounding name, you run the risk they will cancel your project.
I might have made more money $_$. This seems like a good way for high schoolers to make some money while doing something other than just flipping burgers or working at a convenience store. They might even develop some skills and would help on a college resume.
.... So they can get to their next batch of potential employees before Ballmer does.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
What? And lose my amateur status?
Although I dabbled in BBS's, and a little BASIC code in high school I really wouldn't have wanted to waste my summer coding. High Schoolers should be trying to get laid.
Someone please write a C++ YAML parser/emitter library and document it. It's a painful omission.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Well, except for a few countries (Cuba, etc), and the reason for that is I believe Google is sanctioned against including those due to US law? (Being one of the entities involved, but from New Zealand, I am not certain on US law restrictions)
Because there are some PHP projects, Google should lower the age limit (it's 13), because real programmers don't write in PHP after age of 12.
Whee, money!
Well it was CmdrTaco who mentioned building stuff during High School, but come to think of it, had Google extended the newly launched High School contest even further, to grade/elementary/primary school I could have entered, but that would have needed to have been launched before Google got big :)
Back in my day I wrote a large number of QuickBasic (compiled as soon as they got to a certain size) and Borland C programs; which would cover the spectrum of multiplayer addons to games like Doom (and later Quake), all manner of small utilities, and some nostelgic Screen 13 (VGA 320x200x256 colour) games which used assembly on the tighter loops. I was sad to say my real only access to a LAN at that time was our school, fitted with low-end 386s, meaning I never really finished my IPX networking code because it was infuriatingly slow in comparison to my trusty 486DX2/66 at the time.
Sadly somewhere all that sourcecode was lost, although I'm some of may lurk around old Geocities homepages etc :P
But never mind, I still get to benefit from the program because I went off to co-found the SilverStripe web platform/CMS project, one of the open source projects involved in this high school contest... ;)
Yeah, tasks are very transparent and obvious before you commit to anything. (Examples for the SilverStripe project) and you're more likely to get useful opportunities out of putting "Worked on some cool tasks for an open source project in a Google contest for two weekends" than a year's worth of cleaning your Dad's car, babysitting, working at the cinema candy booth, starbucks etc.
I'd love to get my son or daughter interested in this. But given the limited list of options I don't really see this happening. Heck, four of the ten options are content management systems(!). Is this really going to excite young high school kids? Where's the music related projects? The social networking projects?
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
Err... I don't know about you, but if I see two tits on a platter and nothing/nobody else around, I could certainly resist.
True, but there were other opportunities back then that aren't available now. I sold a couple of Apple II programs (and the articles describing them) to Nibble, one of which was published. Magazines like that don't even exist anymore.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I am somewhat disappointed about the available tasks. They have tasks up like: "Remove old icons from gnome-desktop" and "Design logo" over at Apache. Are you taking young programmers seriously? I know, I know, these tasks must be done, but how's this supposed to attract the younger, yet still just as serious, programmers? There are many young guys out there that are making MMORPGs, networking libraries, improving obscure microprocessor architectures, and tons of other fun stuff. Some of us (ahem) have spent many hours behind the debugger working out kinks in algorithms, in games, or logged hours late into the night just for the hell of it. I was really hoping that this would be an opportunity to encourage serious open source development from the younger programmers out there, but really it looks more practical to join some of the open source mailing lists and going rogue. Google could have just named these guys with their label and make the whole (true) experience more than worthwhile, rather than dishing out these insults. But it's a start, I am eager to see how this plays out.
When I was in high school, we had to write a thousand lines of code to open a window with a button. Now, with 30 lines of code, high schoolers can render an instant search on petabytes of data in 3D on a cell phone. Pretty amazing progress.
So Google should go out of their way to violate the laws of the land in which they reside?
Google's a business. If you have issue with the embargoes, take it up with the government that passes the laws they're subject to.
See new born baby Google (Truman) Burbank nurtured to manhood for thirty years as the subject of a generations long software developer enrichment program, but where he is never told that he's a Google employee.
:-)
Every one he knows is a Google employee, including his wife and best friend, who have been contracted to act on a specially constructed Google campus with five thousand hidden cameras. They are all recording the growth and life of Google (Truman) Burbank on 24 hour YouTube.
Same number: zero.
A: It violates Megan's law.
When I went to high school, I participated in a program called ThinkQuest in 1999 and 2000. At the time it was run by an organization called advanced.org. Since then, Oracle has continued the program and it has changed for the worse. But back then, this program is probably a good portion of the reason behind my educational successes, my increased knowledge base, and some really good lessons learned that I would have never had otherwise.
ThinkQuest in those years was a pretty amazing program. You worked in teams of up to three students and international collaboration was required. In addition you could have two coaches which served more as mentors rather than coaches. The objective of the project was to build a educational website on nearly any topic. The website, whether it won or not, would be hosted and displayed on the web free of charge. The teams that won were awarded scholarships in sums of $5000, $10,000, and $15,000 per a student. That meant that if your team won first place, each of the students on the team was awarded $15,000 in scholarship money. There were 5 or 6 different categories and each category had a first place price. There was also a best of competition prize which had a sum of $25,000 per each student I think.
The program in a few words was awesome. There were no defined goals or constraints on what you could do other than that the website had to be for good educational purposes. Everything was totally in your control and up to you and that included content research, website development, and any innovation. Some websites had games and other flashy things. It was all acceptable.
I participated two years in a row. My team was completely international (US, Germany, Singapore) but we lost contact with the Singapore guy shortly after the formation of the team. In short, we failed with just two of us putting in effort and it was our first stab at the competition. But we learned a lot and I gained at least one valuable team member. The second year we added a Hong Kong team member and dumped the other guy for obvious reasons. We revamped the content and added more things that we hoped we would accomplish to make the site more interactive and we went to the finals to meet each other in person for the first time.
Looking back I am glad I took the opportunity for tons of reasons and I wish more students had the same opportunity I did. You got to meet different international individuals and overcome something seemingly impossible and challenging. But you didn't care, you were a carefree high school student. Today, people doing the same thing would be considered entrepreneurs and it is much scarier because your paycheck and credibility is on the line. Just like we failed the first time we learned what not to do (we made sure we recruited someone with previous competition experience) but many people don't have that experience or are too afraid to take the risks.
In addition after winning the competition many big successes shortly came after. It was probably one of the major reasons why I was accepted to universities and why I was offered a technical job in high school. It also stimulated me to accelerate my knowledge and learning abilities because I had no choice but to learn new things like web development in order to compete. Had I not had that experience I probably would have suffered just like everyone else in college because I would have wasted all my time in high school doing stupid things like watching tv or playing games.
So you're right. You should be disappointed. This is actually a poorly designed competition for your benefit.