Coding for Community (2015)

Coding for Community (2015) is an educational initiative with cash awards to encourage college and high school students to develop software (code) for the benefit of their community.  The initiative rides on the free capability of vCalc and is focused on providing math tools (calculators and data) that are built for different parts of the community.  Math is in nearly every endeavor and people in every demographic struggle with understanding and accurately using the math needed in their lives. 

Our Communities

Our communities include the people and organizations that we encounter in our lives.  Our communities include:

• Academia: Education based communities span the entire academic range including K-12, vocational schools, colleges and universities.
• Industry:  Industries ranges from small local retail, to the agriculture industry (local farmers), to manufacturing and any other business in the community.
• Society: Social groups range from formal organizations (civic groups, churches and local governments) to social groups that share common interest, and include advocacy groups, conservationist and hobbyist.

Coding for Community (2015) is geared to used the talents of our students to help these groups with free on-line tools. 

Awards

The students that build free calculators for their community are eligible for two awards:

• vCalc President's Award -  These awards range from $100 to $1,000 and are given to the best community tools as judged by the vCalc President
• Coding for Community (2015) User Award - This award is also for $1,000 and goes to the community tool that is most used by the community over six months.

The President's Award(s) will be made in December of 2015, and the Coding for Community User Award will be evaluated for the period between January 1, 2016 and March 31, 2016, and announced shortly there after.

Participants

Coding for Community (2015) is open to eligible college and high school students at qualified education  institutions.  Becoming  a qualified educational institution is free, and requires that students at the institution receive a free training seminar in basic programming in the vCalc platform.  Interested institutions are encourage to contact vCalc (see Contact US below) and request information to schedule a free training session at your school.

The participating educational institutions in 2015 are:

• Frostburg State University (Maryland)
• Africa Nazarene University (Nairobi, Kenya)
• St Mary's College of Maryland (Maryland)
• Morgan State University (Maryland)
• Gannon University (Pennsylvania)
• Taylor University (Indiana)
• Dominican University (Illinois)
• University of Indianapolis (Indiana)
• Eastern Illinois University (Illinois)
• Olivet Nazarene University (Illinois)
• Eastern Nazarene College (Massachusetts)
• Messiah College (Pennsylvania)
• Garrett County Maryland High Schools (Maryland)
• Bristol Community College (Massachusetts)

How to participate?

Participation is very easy. 

1. Create a vCalc account if you haven't already.  It's easy and free.
2. Create a vCalc token (calculator, equation, constant or dataset).
3. Copy the URL for the vCalc token.
4. Click on the Contact Us button (link) on the bottom of any vCalc screen and paste the URL of the submission in the Description field and put Coding for Community in the Subject field.
5. Follow vCalc on Facebook for notifications and updates.

Feel free to submit as many tokens as you wish.  Also, feel free to update your tokens and improve them with time.  This may help in the Coding for Community (2015) User Award across time.  However, the President's Award will be based on the state of the token on December 1st, 2015. 

Note:  It is very important that you share your token with the people in your community and social network.  vCalc makes that easy with the SHARE button on every page.  This can help make you a winner as more and more people see and use the free tool that you've created.

Good Luck!  We are very excited to see how you will help your community and help the world in the process.

Kurt Heckman, President vCalc LLC