By Alana Mitchelson
A BERWICK student has been announced as this year’s Victorian champion at the Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge.
St Margaret’s College Year 8 student Eleanor Slade outperformed the top 50 competitors to receive the highest result at the Victorian finals last month.
The challenge was completed by more than 1.3 million students from across 50 countries, with 30,000 Australia wide.
St Margaret’s head of digital learning Chris Wyatt provided competing Berwick students mentoring in the lead up to the challenge, working through sample questions from previous years.
He said computational thinking is essential to the development of computer applications but it is also used in problem solving across all disciplines, including maths, science, engineering and humanities.
“Eleanor is very open-minded. She was one of four of our girls who made the top 50,” he said.
“Her outstanding results put her ahead of the other competitors and the competition definitely fit well with the computational thinking encouraged in our maths curriculum.
“Eleanor will have the opportunity to take on computer studies as electives during her senior years at school.”
The Bebras Challenge aims to raise interest in computer science and help young people understand computational thinking.
For more information, visit challenge.bebras.edu.au
