programming in pajamas

On Saturday, 2/23 at the Innovation Connector, Upward Bound held an overnight competition called “Programming in Pajamas: Up All Night with Upward Bound.” During this 16-hour overnight competition, 40 students competed in teams of 5-6 to complete the highest number of tasks in the time given. The tasks included Khan Academy math challenges, Hour of Code coding challenges, Shafer Leadership Academy team challenges, and a variety of MPL Digital Climbers challenges using logic games like Gravity Maze, Cat Crimes, and more.
 
Together our teams completed 301 challenges and our winning team finished 62 challenges. The winners (Red Team) took home $50 each, donated by the Ivy Tech Foundation, and our runner-ups (Purple Team) received a variety of $25 gift cards donated by Ontario Systems. Our partners for the event include the Innovation Connector, the Coding Connector, the Ivy Tech Foundation, Muncie Public Library, Shafer Leadership Academy, Ball State’s Center for Information and Communication Sciences, and Ontario Systems. 
 
Throughout the night, we enjoyed drop-in performances by a variety of Ball State fraternities and sororities, many of whose members regularly volunteer as tutor-mentors in the Upward Bound program (Zeta Phi Beta, Phi Beta Sigma, Alpha Kappa Alpha, and Kappa Alpha Psi). The fraternities and sororities stepped, chanted, and strolled for our kids and showed them a fun and exciting aspect of college life they might not be familiar with. We also kept things fun and exciting by peppering the evening with karaoke contests, a blind energy-drink taste-test, a trivia game, and more!