By Victoria Stone-Meadows
GRADE 6 student from St Kevin’s Primary School in Hampton Park Jasnoor Daler has been named the third best computational thinker in Victoria in a recent national competition.
Ms Daler competed in the Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge that is run by the CSIRO and tests student’s abilities when it comes to this kind of thinking.
The CSIRO’s Digital Careers program manager Nicolette Venn said the challenge wasn’t necessarily about thinking like a computer.
“The Bebras competition is about computational thinking, not thinking like a computer,” she said.
“It’s about applying problem solving skills and skills we use every day, but don’t always recognise and apply that to sets of logic and patterns, breaking things down and applying an algorithm and applying a set of rules to solve a problem.”
The challenge was completed by over 1.3 million students from over 50 countries in 2016 with 30,000 of those being Australian students.
Ms Daler competed against 100 students at Monash University in Clayton at the Victorian final; all vying for the top spot.
“When I went to Monash University for the Victorian State Final, I had many feelings going through me,” Ms Daler said.
“I felt a bit nervous, but mainly I was there to have fun with my friends, family, and teachers.”
Ms Daler is a talented maths student and has shown a lot of promise in the logic and critical thinking areas, but she said she was not expecting to place high in the competition.
“When I was awarded 3rd place I was very surprised to hear that. In the end, I was very pleased with myself for I had made a huge achievement.”
Ms Daler’s teacher Denise McMaster said the Bebras competition was a great opportunity for Ms Daler to exercise her skills and knowledge.
“It was fantastic to see her have the opportunity and her parents are very excited, and she thought it was great,” Ms McMaster said.
