Microworlds for Programming Bebras Tasks in Czechia

Abstract

The poster presents Bebras informatics tasks based on assembling a program from blocks. These tasks were created in templates based on Papert's microworlds and they familiarize pupils with classical problems used in CS education. In these microworlds, pupils create and run a program which controls a sprite in order to solve a problem emerging from a described situation. We created four such templates. Each template was supplied with its own set of tasks, differing in a topic, a subject matter and graphics. We created more than 100 tasks in total. As pupils go through each task, they repeatedly run the created program while the system provides them with feedback. Some of the tasks were included into the Czech Bebras Challenge, whereas from others we created sets of tasks (like Hour of code) usable in lessons. More than 430 000 pupils aged 10 to 19 from hundreds of Czech schools tried these tasks in 2021, 2022. Our experience shows that these tasks with their interactivity can attract pupils to the contest and thus can contribute to advance pupils' informatics skills.