This past year, I was able to convince my administration to allow me to create a new course - Software Development. I really felt there was something missing in our kids CS preparation - missing both from Stuy’s program and from many youngsters college experiences.

I plan to do a few posts on the course, it’s design, implementation, and lessons learned, but for today, let’s look at the years culminating event:

The class had students working in teams taking projects from idea to completion. Last week, we had a demo night, hosted by CSTUY and Google. Neal Zupancic, part of our Stuy CS family attended the event and put together a wonderful write up on the CSTUY Blog.

Before getting into details, thanks goes out to Ben Fried, Mike Mu, and the rest of the Stuy CS Googlers who helped out. Ben for securing the space, Mike for coordinating everything, and the rest for manning the event.

The students, parents, friends, alums, and guests from the NY Tech scene gathered at Google at 6:00 last Thursday. Judging the event, we had Brandon Diamond of HuffPost labs, founder of the Hacker Union and NYTM board member, Evan Korth, founder of hackNY, NYTM board member and NYU Professor and Lee Fischman, StuyCS family member, currently at Galorath, and as dinosaurs like me remember, one of the creators of The Big Electric Cat. Awesome folk all.

The students presented a set of amazing projects. They can all be found on the class github page.

The evening was like a NYTM for a group of amazing high school youngsters.

Here are some of the highlights:

Scavenger Tours

Tied for winning project

• Team: Denis, Claire, Sofia, and Sarah
• Github: https://github.com/stuycs-softdev/ScavengerTours
• Live: http://ml7.stuycs.org:1995/

Create tours that people can take using their mobile devices.

Stuy Wiggles

Winner - “Scratch your own itch”

• Team: Georgianna, Mengdi, Victoria
• Github: https://github.com/stuycs-softdev/StuyWiggles
• Live: http://ml7.stuycs.org:7007/about

An attempt at fixing all the problems students have registering for classes at Stuyvesant. This is probably the most polished project of all the demos.

Stall Wall

Winner – most amusing project

• Team: Ivan Smirnoff Jules Skrill
• Github: https://github.com/stuycs-softdev/StallWall
• Live: http://ml7.stuycs.org:45454/

Collaborative network writing on the bathroom wall!!!!

Web Explorer

Tied for winning project

• Team: Eli Nass, Shan Shi, Brian Yan, Brain Zhang
• Github https://github.com/stuycs-softdev/NSYZ
• Live http://ml7.stuycs.org:1999/

Turn any web page into a game.

The students had a great time and got lots of feedback from the audience, particularly during pizza time after the demos.

I’ll post more about the course in the coming weeks but demo night was a terrific conclusion to a terrific first year.