The Initiative of VU Professor Received the European Award

Valentina Dagienė, professor of the VU Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, and Dr. Wolfgang Pohl received the European Award in recognition of the outstanding educational initiative “Bebras” (“Beaver” in English). The winners of the International Contest on Informatics and Computer Fluency were declared by the European Association “Informatics Europe” during the annual ceremony in Vienna.

V. Dagienė, the originator of the idea, presented the success story of the “Bebras” initiative, which was born in 2004 with the purpose to introduce Informatics and Computational Thinking to school students. The “Bebras” competition is all about tasks that encourage students to think creatively and critically to solve problems using informatics concepts. This challenge was successfully replicated in Estonia, Poland, the Netherlands and Germany in 2006 already. “Bebras” has been held in more than 36 countries across the globe for more than 10 years.

And it is expanding further on successfully. Professor V. Dagiene is invited to present the “Bebras” during the Plenary at the 23rd World Computer Congress in Daejeon, South Korea. Over 40 countries will join the initiative “Bebras” in the late autumn this year.