Global Chess Challenge has been pushed back and will return in 2022
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Welcome to The Global Chess Challenge 2021/22
What is The Global Chess Challenge
Kai’s Clan uses an innovative approach to playing Chess over the internet and blends both physical and virtual worlds together. A totally immersive and collaborative Coding Experience, where students compete in teams against each other.
Perhaps most importantly chess is a fun way to teach children how to think and solve an ever-changing and diverse array of difficult problems. With millions of possibilities in every game, players must continually face new positions and new problems.
They cannot solve these using a simple formula or relying on memorized answers. Instead, they must analyze and calculate, relying on general principles and patterns along with a dose of creativity and originality – a skill that increasingly mirrors what students must confront in their everyday schoolwork.
The Competition
The first Global Chess Challenge is aimed at schools and chess clubs, for students ages 7 – 18 years old, in teams of up to 4 with a coach/supervisor and students compete in three categories.
Kai’s Clan has now introduced chess on their ‘Create Mat’. Students can play chess on a physical mat (8×8 squares) and also experience their chess pieces come to life in a virtual world.
A unique feature is that it doesn’t matter where you are. With Kai’s Chess, you can be sitting around and playing on one mat, or you can be on 2 different chess boards/mats versing your friends in the next room or you can challenge another school anywhere in the world.
Usually, chess is a two-player game, but with Kai’s Chess you can collaborate and all play together.
You can create your own game/project and code your chess moves, add animations, effects, sound, speech bubbles, etc.
Go further and design your own avatar chess pieces. Apart from teaching maths and coding, we unlock the child’s creativity with The Global Chess Challenge.
Organising Committee
Heidi Williams is a passionate coding and computational thinking advocate.
She is a retired public-school educator with 30+ years of experience in education. She has served her community as a language, science, and mathematics teacher for grades 6-8, as well as roles as a differentiation specialist, technology integration specialist, instructional coach, gifted and talented coordinator, elementary principal, and K-8 director of curriculum.
Williams has shared her passion for integrating coding into the curriculum at local, state, regional, and national conferences, and many have leveraged her expertise for conference presentations, coding coaching, professional development, and K-12 scope and sequence alignment of computer science skills throughout the curriculum.
She is also the author of ISTE’s No Fear Coding – Computational Thinking Across the K-5 Curriculum.
nofearcoding.org
EDGEucating offers cutting EDGE solutions for businesses and educational organizations to help guide them through the process of change.
We believe that education and cultural change requires a village to foster true learning and to achieve change. Today’s students must be prepared to thrive in a constantly evolving technological landscape.
EDGEucating supports this Global Chess Challenge because it requires students to use a variety of technology skills to develop and employ strategies for understanding and solving problems. In addition, students will broaden their perspectives and enrich their learning by collaborating with others and working effectively in teams, both locally and globally.
These are all skills that prepare students for college and/or future careers.
https://www.edgeucating.com/
Elliott Neff is a National Master in Chess, author of A Pawn’s Journey (October 2018), and Founder/CEO of Chess4Life, which exists to help kids develop life skills through the game of chess. Thousands of kids are positively impacted weekly through Chess4Life programs across the country, from preschool through high school. Find out more at www.chess4life.com
STEM educational organization reaching disadvantaged and low-income rural students. Classroom training, teacher training, after school programs, summer camps, competitions, teacher conferences. Subjects emphasized include robotics, underwater ROV’s, drones, 3D printing, virtual reality, and prosthetic. Our STEM Affiliate School program gives us a close working relationship with public, private, and home schools. Our on-line STEM Academy allow for distance learning into rural students and schools.
https://www.stemadvancement.org/
http://MississippiSTEMAcademy.com
Kai’s Clan is an adventure in collaborative coding, a place where student engagement and learning become one.
Kai’s Clan facilitates collaboration across multiple locations due to its multiplayer cloud platform. A student in a different classroom, or even in a different state or country can collaborate on a shared class activity or goal.
The face of Kai’s Clan, Part CEO, part-geek, Bruce Jackson leads the strategy and technology side of the business. His passion for innovation and technology-led Bruce to create Kai’s Clan, a more exciting way to teach coding and improve student engagement while doing so. Bruce pushes the boundaries with his passion to provide young people with opportunities and training to help build their STEM skills for their futures.
Ronel Schodt is a voracious learner, adventurer, edupreneur, and partner in learning with teachers and students around the world. Driven by her passion to inspire in others a love of learning, Ronel’s expertise is grounded in how we integrate digital technologies for developing global competencies and preparing students to succeed as next-generation learners.
In Heidi’s book, she speaks about Kai’s Clan and the Global Chess Challenge.
“Not only does chess improve cognitive skills – such as pattern recognition, algebraic and geometric thinking, and spatial reasoning – it also helps improve the executive functioning skills of problem-solving, critical thinking, attention span, and memory capacity. ”
— Heidi Williams, author of No Fear Coding
and a 
for teaching kids coding
Autonomous Works Company