The Bebras Computing Challenge is back again this year and will take place between November 5th and 16th.
Bebras is an international online motivational challenge designed to get students all over the world excited about computing and computational thinking and is run in over 40 countries. Taking place in Ireland since 2012, the Bebras Challenge introduces computational thinking and computer science to students from 8-18 years by allowing them to solve interactive tasks online. These tasks consist of fun and engaging short questions that can be answered without prior knowledge of computational thinking, where students are required to think in and about information, discrete structures, computation, data processing, but they also must use algorithmic concepts. It teaches participants that computational thinking is an integral part of solving problems in daily life and aims to get students excited about computing.
The word Bebras is Lithuanian for ‘Beaver’, the protagonist of most Bebras tasks. Bebras has been a huge success since it was founded in 2004, with over 2 million students in 44 countries taking part in 2017 alone.
Bebras has challenges for five age categories, incorporating primary and secondary students. Each challenge consists of 15 multiple choice questions – 5 easy questions, 5 medium questions and 5 hard questions and each participant gets 45 mins to complete. The top achieving students across all age groups will be invited to attend a final round in Maynooth University during Tech Week 2019. You can register as a school coordinator online and try the practice challenge with your students here.
The Bebras Challenge is organised in Ireland by the ICS Foundation and you can find out more at bebras.techweek.ie.