Abstract
The teaching of Informatics in lower and upper secondary education has a long tradition in Slovakia. In 2009, a new subject, Elementary Informatics (“Informatická výchova” in the Slovak language), was introduced into primary education. This paper describes its aims and relates how contests can be a form of learning and a way to test children’s knowledge. Secondary schools have the Bebras Contest, and in this article we present the process of transforming tasks from the international database of Bebras tasks so that they are appropriate for the national contest in Slovakia. Furthermore, in order to facilitate participation of primary school children in the contest, we prepared and tested tasks in a new contest category, Little Beaver. The paper presents criteria of an appropriate contest task for children who are between 8 and 9 years old. Several tasks, which were solved by them in the pilot year of the contest, are included.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Kalas, I., Winczer, M.: Informatics as a Contribution to the Modern Constructivist Education. In: Mittermeir, R.T., Sysło, M.M. (eds.) ISSEP 2008. LNCS, vol. 5090, pp. 229–240. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Štátny vzdelávací program Informatická výchova, Príloha ISCED 1 (The standards for Elementary Informatics in Slovakian), http://www.statpedu.sk/
Blaho, A., Salanci, Ľ., Chalachánová, M., Gabajová, Ľ.: Informatická výchova pre 2. ročník, aitec, Bratislava (2010) (Textbook of Elementary Informatics, in Slovakian)
Kalas, I., Tomcsanyiova, M.: Students’ Attitude to Programming in Modern Informatics. In: 9th WCCE: IFIP World Conference on Computers in Education – Education and Technology for a Better World, pp. 127–135. Porto Alegre (2009)
International Web page of the Bebras contest, http://www.bebras.org/
Hrušecká, A., Pekárová, J., Tomcsányi, P., Tomcsányiová, M.: Informatický bobor – nová súťaž v informačných technológiách pre žiakov základných a stredných škôl. In: Proceedings Didinfo, Banská Bystrica (2008) (Informatic Beaver – a new contest in ICT for lower and upper secondary students, in Slovakian)
Dagiene, V., Futschek, G.: Bebras International Contest on Informatics and Computer Literacy: Criteria for Good Tasks. In: Mittermeir, R.T., Sysło, M.M. (eds.) ISSEP 2008. LNCS, vol. 5090, pp. 19–30. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Polya, G.: How to Solve It: Summary. Princeton University Press, Princeton (1957)
Gregussová, M., Kovacikova, D.: Sú naše deti vo virtuálnom prostredí v bezpečí? (Are our children safe in the virtual environment? In Slovakian), http://www.zodpovedne.sk/index.php
Piaget, J., Inhelder, B.: The Psychology of the Child. Basic Books, New York (1969)
Chiasson, S., Gutwin, C.: Design Principles for Children’s Technology, http://hci.usask.ca/publications/2005/HCI_TR_2005_02_Design.pdf
Futschek, G., Dagiene, V.: A Contest on Informatics and Computer Fluency Attracts School Students to Learn Basic Technology Concepts. In: 9th WCCE IFIP World Conference on Computers in Education – Education and Technology for a Better World, pp. 1–9. Porto Alegre (2009)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Tomcsányiová, M., Tomcsányi, P. (2011). Little Beaver – A New Bebras Contest Category for Children Aged 8–9. In: Kalaš, I., Mittermeir, R.T. (eds) Informatics in Schools. Contributing to 21st Century Education. ISSEP 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7013. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24722-4_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24722-4_18
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-24721-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-24722-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)