BSN Student Wins First Place in the COBIS Digital Creations Competition

We are delighted to announce that Junior School Vlaskamp (JSV) Year 5 student Vivek has won first place in the Coding category of the Just2easy and Council of British International Schools (COBIS) Digital Creations Competition - Climate Action Challenge.

In this online competition, students were posed the following question:

Climate change is an issue that affects us all, but what can we do about it?

Students were challenged to create an animation or game using the Just2easy Tool Suite to raise awareness of climate change. The competition was split into two categories - Animation for KS1 students, and Coding for KS2 students, and was an exciting opportunity for students to raise awareness of climate change issues while developing their digital literacy skills.

Vivek’s winning entry, a game called Save the Coral Reef from Trash – in which the player gains points for catching falling pieces of litter but loses points for catching the coral – stood out to the judges:

The judges were really impressed with this entry. They appreciated the clear initial instructions on how to play, which made the game accessible from the start. The hand-drawn sprites added a unique and personal touch that stood out from many other entries. The game was well paced, and the built-in scoring system added a great layer of challenge and engagement.

Vivek was awarded a certificate and prize for his outstanding work!

You can see Vivek’s game in action by clicking on the image below:

Vivek on the experience of winning the competition:

I am happy and proud of myself.  I enjoyed drawing my own sprites and tried my best to draw them nicely. It’s harder to draw on a computer than paper but satisfying when you finally achieve it.

"It was tricky getting the trash to reappear at the top of the screen. I had to think a lot about what to do.  I finally used a conditional that checked if the trash hit the bottom of the screen, a copy of the trash was stamped at the bottom and then the trash returned to the top in a random horizontal position by using coordinates and a random x value. It was a very fun challenge."

I hope we do more next year. Never Give Up. If I can do it, you can too!

Claire Waller, Headteacher at JSV:

Congratulations to Vivek and all of Year 5 for their hard work they put into this competition. We are also grateful to Ms Kuijpers for providing this authentic and challenging learning experiences for our students.

Fiona Kuijpers, Computing Teacher at JSV:

This coding challenge was a great opportunity to teach my pupils to delve deeper into game design and use computational thinking skills, particularly decomposition and abstraction. This helped them to practise the importance of breaking down a complex problem of designing ‘a game’ into smaller, more manageable parts.

"They carefully planned out their games before coding each desired function separately.

I also encourage them to digitally draw all their own game visuals rather than using stock images to really make their games their own. I am really proud of Vivek and all the Y5 pupils for all their hard work with this competition."

We are incredibly proud of Vivek for his creativity and impressive coding skills - an inspiring demonstration of (Digital) Responsibility, one of our BSN Character Profile attributes, brought to life through his innovative use of technology.

A special mention also goes to fellow JSV students Florencia and Noah, whose games were highly commended by the judges!

A huge thank you to JSV Computing Teacher, Fiona Kuijpers, for her guidance and support throughout the competition.