Coding for Community (2015)

Coding for Community (2015) is an educational initiative 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 datasets) 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. 

Contest Rules

There are a few simple rules.

1. Only students from the participating schools (listed below) are eligible.
2. Submissions can be made any time and updated at any time.
3. Submissions can be made by teams of students, and the award(s) shared between the team members.
4. All submissions must be done by midnight EDS on 15 December 2015.   See instructions below.
5. The President awards will be made on 22 December 2015 based on the state of the submissions on the 15 December deadline.
6. You can enter as many different submissions as you wish.
7. Submissions can be updated after the deadline to improve their usefulness to the community and to attract additional users.  These changes are encouraged and can improve the chances of winning the subsequent User Award.
8. All submissions will be monitored for community use between 1 January 2016 and 31 March 2016.  The submission that was used the most will win the User Award.
9. Non-human methods of increasing traffic to submissions (bots etc) will result in submission being disqualified for User Award.  However, submitters are highly encouraged to promote their creations via community blogs, news groups, and general social media promotion.  

vCalc Instructions

Once you create your free vCalc account you can create your own content (calculators, equations, constants and datasets) to share with your community.  To help this vCalc has user HELP.  You can click on the Help button on any page and it will take you to the instructional pages, or you can go to the following links:

vCalc’s Help Documentation:

• General User Help: https://www.vcalc.com/wiki/support/Knowledge+Base

vCalc tutorial videos on YouTube:

• Duplicate a Calculator: https://youtu.be/8u43mvpnkYE
• Create Custom Calc: https://youtu.be/ullQGfuPg6A
• Create an Equation: https://youtu.be/z-p7wQn-25I

Awards

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

• vCalc President's Award(s) -  These awards range from $25 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 December 1, 2016 and March 31, 2016, and announced shortly thereafter.

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 in the Description field and put Coding for Community in the Subject field.
5. Watch this page 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