August 10, 2020
Many of you are already familiar with it: Bundeswettbewerb Informatik. Young adults up to the age of 21 are encouraged to develop an interest in information technology and programming, as well as to discover hidden talents. Unfortunately, as it is usually the case - the percentage of males in the technological field is much higher than that of women. We intend to change this ratio. We believe, the earlier we start to encourage girls, the greater the chances of success. That is why we organized a preparation class for the Bundeswettbewerb Informatik this year, in addition to our programming courses aimed at girls. Through these classes we prepare girls for the national competition, so that they are able to showcase their skills and receive support along their path to success. The winners of this competition get offered attractive grants.
Currently, the classes are held online.
Our first course started in May. At that time, the focus was mainly on SNAP which was manageable, though, it became more and more demanding. Right now we are dealing with Python. And like most meetings and classes, this course is also held virtually. The bright side: Girls from all over Germany can participate. In fact, 32 girls aged 12 - 18 years from almost all German states were present during our introduction class to Python.
Our instructors are girls themselves who already possess extensive knowledge on programming.
Our teachers are: Alexandra, Hannah, Hanna, Jana, and Sarah. Their motivation even leaped over to our students. It was great to see that many young, intelligent and curious girls took the opportunity to participate in our class, as well as be part in the competition
Interactive group work instead of frontal teaching.
The classes take place every Thursday for two hours. In order to break the ice and to respond to specific concerns, participants are supposed to self-evaluate their level and afterwards join the groups for 10 minutes. Each of our instructors supervises one group and asks for some feedback on what the participants are specifically interested in, and on which topics they would need support. This is also asked in the big group using the Tool Mentimeter. As a result, we quickly found out who, for instance, still needs help with the installation of Python and thus reacted immediately. The same could be disclosed in terms of most helpful course content and mood capturing. Especially for shy participants it is a very good tool, along with gathering feedback from all attendees in a short amount of time. The slides we created were considered as very useful: “The slides really helped me to understand the content much easier”. Alexandra, Hanna, Hannah, Jana and Sarah explained different areas later on. Hannah started with the basics of how the command line in Python works. Alexandra described how functions are written and what they should pay attention to. As a task, the attendees had to write a function that can draw a Christmas tree. Throughout, they were allowed to ask questions via chat which would be quickly answered by someone else. Thus the students could easily follow. The lessons were adapted to the requirements of the national competition.The participants were supposed to learn how to read code, understand it but also write code and small programs themselves - just as the tasks at the BwInf will be constructed. Over the period, the girls have the possibility to send suggestions regarding the next course via our telegram group chat, or ask questions which our instructors will answer.
Mastering the national competition together
The follow-up course began on 6 August where we deal with old tasks of the Federal Computer Science Competition. We plan to solve more than 30 former BwInf tasks and then discuss them together since we believe it is best to learn by doing. For a competition like this, it is probably the best method to deal with such tasks. So come and join us! You can still register for free. Our classes are designed to connect the participants with each other and to build one or several teams. We will accompany them during the first round of the BwInf. Our course leaders will support you if you need any help but of course there are no ready-made solutions, hence you can continue solving them yourself after the end of our course ;)
Missed the latest course?
If you are interested in joining us, please contact us. You need some previous knowledge for our current class but there are materials you can work with to catch up. In the next year we will prepare girls for the federal competition of computer science once again.