More high-school students than ever before are contributing some useful work for open source organizations that are part of Google Code-in, a seven week global contest designed to introduce teens to open source software development.

Code-in is Google's annual  contest for students between 13 and 17. It brings together teenagers and open source organizations with the idea of giving "pre-university students" an experience of real world coding which might inspire them to consider Computer Science in their future educational and career plans.

Now in its eighth year, GCI 2017 started on  November 28, 2017 and runs until January 17, 2017. There are 25 open source organizations participating this year. They set a large number "bite-size" tasks that require between 3-5 hours of effort  in topics that include coding, documentation, UI/UX, quality assurance and volunteer mentors from each open source project help students to complete them.

Reporting on the progress made by December 14, Mary Radomile from Google Open Source commented:

Total registered students has already surpassed 2016 numbers and we are less than halfway to the finish! We’re thrilled that high school students are embracing GCI like never before.

She provided the following stats:

• Total registered students: 6,146
• Number of students who have completed at least one task: 1,573 (51% of those students have completed more than 3 tasks, earning them a GCI t-shirt)
• Total number of tasks completed: 5,499
• Most tasks completed by one student: 39

India is the country in which most tasks have been completed to-date with the United States in second place.

The contest has now reached all parts of the world as this map shows:

The blog post notes 

GCI wouldn’t be possible without the effort of the more than 725 mentors and organization administrators. Based in 65 countries, mentors answer questions, review submissions, and approve tasks for students at all hours of the day -- and sometimes night! They work tirelessly to help encourage and guide the next generation of open source contributors.

Students come from even more countries. If you are between 13 and 17 and meet the eligibility criteria (see Contest Rules) there is still time to register, join in, contribute to open source software and win prizes:

At the end of the contest, each organization will choose five finalists to receive limited edition Google Code-in hoodies! Two finalists from each organization will be grand prize winners and go on a trip to Google Headquarters in California.

More Information

Google Code-In

Related Articles

Google Code-In 2016 Progress Report

Google Code-In 2016 Underway

Google Code-In 2014 Announced

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