Computational Thinking and Programming Challenges with Eljakim Schrijvers
In this interview with Eljakim Schrijvers, we discuss computational thinking and programming challenges through Bebras and the International Olympiad in Informatics.
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Welcome to the CSK8 podcast my name is
Jared O'Leary in this episode I'm going
to interview Elia Kim from the babe Rose
challenge and the ioi which stands for
the International Olympiad in
informatics since this is my first
interview episode I kind of want to give
some background on what to expect
a typical interview will begin with
myself asking the guest to introduce
themselves now the reason why is because
I want the guests to have control over
their own narrative in terms of what is
said or not said in their BIOS next I
will ask some questions about their
background or some context questions so
we can better understand their
experiences in computer science
education and then we'll get into some
more topical questions related to the
guests expertise or things they'd like
to share with everyone and finally most
interviews well close with some
open-ended questions for the field or
someone durman's that the guest might
have in this interview I will ask him
about his background in education
I will then talk to him about the Babe
Ruth's challenge which is a challenge
that CSK 8 educators could use and in a
couple of weeks starting in November or
as a pretest and posttest throughout the
year to kind of better understand kids
as understandings of computational
thinking and then we will talk about the
ioi which is the International Olympiad
in informatics now the ioi is basically
like a programming competition for the
elite programmers out there so if you've
got some kids who are really good at
coding then you might want to point them
towards the ioi
to learn some more or towards the
american version which we will discuss
in the interview itself I really hope
you enjoy this interview I had a
wonderful time with Kim and I'm going to
start this interview with Kim
introducing himself my name is Elia Kim
skydivers and my friends just call me
Kim and I run the Bellas challenge in
many countries and I'm the treasurer at
the International Olympiad in
informatics and I'm also the coach of
the Dutch team for the ioi which is that
International Olympiad and at the i/o I
actually run the live broadcast where I
talk to thousands of people about
programming now can you tell me the
story of how you got into computer
science and informatics education yeah
you have to remember that I'm an old
person I'm 45 and so in my
entry school nobody had a computer and
then my dad was the first person in the
street to get a computer and our
television was still black and white at
that time just so you know for reference
I was in the computer every night
learning how to program doing things I
taught myself concepts like a stack and
recursion and so I'd never learned these
things from books and then by the end of
high school all of a sudden I learned of
the ioi I got involved and I started
training the Dutch team once I got to
university and so I studied computer
science in the Netherlands and you to be
really honest I absolutely hated it from
day one because when I went to yeah when
I went to uh you know their day where
they're open day where they tell you
about your studies they promised me you
know Kim if you come study here remember
it's not all about programming you will
not spend your whole day behind the
computer you will learn so much more and
I was like oh cool that's what I want
the first couple of weeks they taught me
how to use VI how to use the UNIX
command line and we were programming and
programming and we were never gone from
the computer screen and this was back in
all about computers I want to learn more
right and so I went I went to the
counselor and said I I'm just gonna go
this is not really my thing
I also like well you can't really do
that because you're the best kid we have
right now and we're just gonna keep you
and then so I just yo stayed and I got
it got more fun and more fun because we
spent less time behind the computer and
more time thinking about algorithms and
you know nice cool stuff there the
things that I like doing and then after
four years I just graduated got my
master's degree and started a computer
company during your time it sounds like
you had a lot of informal education just
kind of experimenting on your own and
tinkering on your own computer before
you went into the formalized computer
science education yes we did not have
any computer science education in
schools at the time so my high school is
from 1986 till 1992 the internet wasn't
really there I used BBS's bulletin board
you know where dile dile up with the
modem and I would play trade Wars with
my friends which is a character based
game where you just go around the globe
those were the days we used turbo Pascal
and turbo C quick basic that's how I
started in the u.s. there are a lot of
teachers who don't have a background in
computer science and who are basically
being asked to teach a subject area that
one they've never seen taught before and
two they've never actually had
experience with so since it sounds like
a lot of your education was informal
what would you recommend in terms of
like learning how to teach yourself
computer science or programming what I
find important I want these teachers to
realize it's okay if your kids is better
than you are it's great if you have a
student that's smarter than you are and
I always give us example the math
teachers if in math class they find a
prodigy if there's this kid in math
that's brilliant
you know what math teachers do they call
up their you know their classmates from
their own University and you go like oh
I have this kid and he's great at oh
maybe he will just win a prize and
you're let's send them to the Olympiad
and let's give him this and let's give
him that and then they give that teacher
the feedback what should I do with this
kid that's smarter than the teacher yeah
the nice thing is that there are some
organizations that are helping with
making those connections with computer
science professionals so teachers in the
US can like contact co.org and they
often will be able to find a local
computer scientist who can like come in
and help mentor or provide feedback and
whatnot and that's exactly what I'm
trying to do mm-hmm
so you have also coder dojos all across
the u.s. I'm in fact helping out with
the coder dojo here in the Netherlands
at the local library where we're helping
a lot of elementary school kids and we
teach them the basics of programming and
we actually try to make it what we call
an organized chaos so there's no
classroom there's no teaching we just
have loads of tasks for the kids to do I
think we give them the tasks to work on
and then we have enough volunteers to
help them when they get stuck but
also to give them more tasks if they're
done we had their world the other day
that was really good and really fast and
she kept coming to me and saying I'm
done I'm done I'm done because once you
once you're done at our coderdojo you're
allowed to print something on the 3d
printer so she wanted to go to the 3d
printer like but you're so good let's
make this problem even harder for you
and she'd written some interactive story
using scratch and I said well you know
the singer obviously has to wiggle while
singing so she had to figure out how do
I make it turn back and forth and how do
I make that work well right and she
solved it all and so that's that's the
kind of tinkering that I enjoy doing and
that I think that kids that want to get
good at is she do as well yeah I think
that's a safe way for computer science
educators who might not be comfortable
with like programming in particular is
just ask questions that kind of get kids
to think deeper about what else could I
do
how could I add more to this and even if
all you can do is come up with the ideas
but you don't know how to code it that's
okay you can still guide through some
questioning techniques and you'll
eventually learn how to do it I'm all in
favor of having teachers know realized
and inform the kids that yes they're
there to help but no they don't know
everything but fortunately there's the
internet and the teacher can provide
guidance on where to find things and
which materials to use even though the
teacher may not know every answer
immediately the teacher can help out
with these things yeah I think that's a
great strategy that's something that I
tried to use as well there are a couple
times that kids would ask how to do
something in a programming language and
be like I don't know how to do that yet
let me find out I'll do some research
and I'll chat with you tomorrow about it
and there's the thing right the key word
that you just used is I don't know how
to do that yet which is much more
positive than I don't know how to do
that yeah
look at that that's the key thing right
today with the internet and with
continuous education and everything
that's going so fast you know working in
sprints and companies why don't we work
in Sprint's in schools why don't we just
say well I
know how to do that yeah but no I'll
know next week yeah and one of the
things I try to highlight with kids when
I would go through that process I'd come
back the following day and say here are
the strategies I tried to apply to
figure this out and here's how long it
took me so the reason why I did it
overnight is because it ended up taking
me an hour to find the correct solution
yes but I found all these other like
partial solutions along the way and then
I finally got to it right so like the
idea was to get them to think through
the process not just to give them the
answer and that's really really
important obviously one of the things
that I do is the Barrows challenge and
there are try to motivate the kids to
learn more about computational thinking
so yes it's a challenge and in some
states we even have a second round for
the best kids and they get to go to
university and they get a whole day of
more fun computer science but my goal is
to reach every kid in America
what is the bay breast challenge like
how would you describe what it is to
somebody the best challenge is basically
thinking things algorithms a little bit
of data structures and the tasks are set
up from easy to hard so that it's fun
for everybody so if you start with it
you're not expected to finish yeah if
you finish it's great but if you don't
you still have had a good time solving
the task that you were working on once
you hear the explanation of the solution
you are going to understand it and
you're going to be like oh I wish I
would have caught up with that that's so
nice and simple oh that is so cool what
a great way to do it and for me a good
task doesn't have to be overly hard a
good task is something that you can
think about you should be able to come
to a solution by yourself and the only
thing limiting you during the challenge
was that there was a 45 minute time
limit
oh boy I wanted to have another 45
minutes I would have solved them all one
of my test subjects is my mother and my
mother is a retired 75 year old French
teacher and she
likes to work on the puzzles she thinks
about them and she comes up with
solution she managed to solve them all
and sometimes I'm surprised like mom how
did you solve this she's like well I
just wrote out every possible solution
and like that's 15 pages like now it's
actually 20 pages and I was like well
how did you do that she said well I'm
retired I have a little bit more timing
man and then so she comes up with the
correct answer and then I tell her well
there's actually smarter way of doing it
then that's this and that and then she's
like oh that's clever and then she
realizes that and then the next year I
give her a similar task and then she
applies his methodology that I have
taught her without her realizing that I
was teaching or something so what's an
example of like an easy challenge that a
kid might work on so here is a
non-visual task there is an inspector in
a city and the city has a museum and in
the museum they have a Diamont it's
called the blue diamond and the reason
they call it the blue diamond is because
it's blue during the day 2,000 people
have gone to the museum to look at the
diamond and at the end of the day as
they closed the museum
you know the janitor closes everything
sweeps the floor and he's like huh
that's weird the blue diamond is green
and so someone during the day has taken
the blue diamond and replaced it by a
green diamond but they call the
inspector and the inspector comes to the
museum and he says well who could have
stolen it Museum says well we had 2000
people that came through the museum
today we know exactly in what order they
have come through the museum now we scan
their tickets so we know exactly which
order they came through the museum and
so the inspectors going to go to these
you looked at the diamond what color was
it now was it blue or green and now the
question is how many people does the
inspector have to interview in order to
guarantee that he knows for certain who
is the thief to make it a little easier
and to make sure that there's no
off-by-one errors because this is not
about how good you are at math
it's multiple choice and so the offices
are a you know you have to speak to old
least half of them but if you're not
lucky maybe you know 1500 answer a three
is you have to speak to at least a
hundred people answer for is well don't
know exactly how many but definitely
less than twenty if you do it in a smart
way so you understand the problem right
yeah now lets you and me play a little
game the game is called guess and number
I'm going to think of a number between 0
and 2000 see how clever I chose these
boundaries to match up with how many
people went to the museum ahead yep I'm
going to have a number and you have to
guess it and you can guess a number and
I will say higher or lower or hey you're
correct right so what's what would your
first guess be 1000 exactly you would
guess in the middle because you know if
that's the number then gee you're lucky
but obviously I'm just cheating you
because I will just try to make this
game last so I'm going to say lower what
would you guess so 500 500 lower 250
lower 125 and you see where I'm going
yeah you keep laughing how many
possibilities are so when there's 125
and I say higher the number has to be
between 126 and 249 every time you ask
me a question if you ask the right
question you can discard half the
numbers and boy does it go down fast
that way and if you were asking less
smart questions if you would ask one and
I would say higher and you say to hire
three high you see we're going a
thousand questions but the way you did
it the clever way you start having the
thing and we call that a binary search
it's just the computational thinking a
concept it's an algorithm right but kids
don't know that they're actually
engaging in that when solving the
problem right at some point the diamond
changed from green to blue or from blue
to green and that point is basically the
number that we're aiming for
if someone says blue they mean higher
and if someone says green has answered
they mean lower
right it's the exact same problem just
you know in a more accessible way a bit
a bit more clever maybe but it's a fun
little thing and we tell this to the
kids and when they most kids actually
figure this out
but then when you talk about then you
give them this explanation and like oh
that's pretty clever actually
and then once they start really thinking
about it because sometimes they say
hundred one hundred guesses even though
they figured this out then they start
thinking about it how fast binary
numbers go up when you keep doubling
everything right and because we don't
really want you know we don't care if
the answer is 11 or 12 or maybe even 13
if you if you're off by 1 we don't care
about that that's why you know the
correct answer is definitely less than
don't have to calculate everything you
just think about it a little bit so if
if a kid were to do a challenge like
this if with Babe rose what kind of
feedback would they get to help them
understand how to think computationally
so if they got it wrong if they were
going through like randomly like I'm
gonna pick a 7 and then 500 and then 14
how would you help them understand
there's a more efficient way to sort
through things so in this case this
specific problem we've used was just
multiple choice so we were not playing
against the kids and so it really was
just you know big a B C or D right and
we don't tell them immediately if their
answer was right or wrong but once the
contest is over we have a coordinators
manual that we sent to all the teachers
with every question in it the solution
and background information so here you
can find more information why is this
informatics that's why we could that's
what we call it we call the section it's
informatics and then we write down why
we think it's informatics which URLs can
you go to to find more information about
it and stuff like that
excellent and so are the questions
categorized into different computational
thinking and informatics categories and
so oh I notice the kids didn't do really
well on this particular category but
they did great on this one so I should
review X Y & Z so we have the domains
algorithm and programming data data
structures and representation
communication and networking computer
processes in hardware and interaction
systems and society yeah that sounds
like it hits a lot of the categories in
the national standards from CSTA right
so these domains they are not exactly
aligned to every country because I do
this in many yeah but it aligns 90% to
whatever is happening in every country
right and so we sometimes change it
around a little bit but so if you so
this was an algorithm right this is
binary search when it comes to
communication and networking
we have tasks where we give the kids a
black and white image so pixels say a
grid of 8 by 8 pixels and we tell them
you know in when you're communicating
stuff sometimes the other side doesn't
hear every pixel correctly in order to
come up with a clever way to fix this
computer side is quite often put in what
they call a parity check so at the end
of every row we put one extra pixel to
make sure that the number of black
pixels in that row is even the bottom of
every column we also put in a black
pixel to make sure that the total number
of black pixels in that column is even
so if in a row there are five black
pixels you would put in an extra pixel
in that extra row but if the number of
pixels that is black is four then you
put in a white pixel in that extra you
know that extra pixel at the end of the
row similarly for the vertical ones for
the columns we explained to them that
this is an error detecting code and then
we give them the image that has a
mistake in it and we ask them what is
the transmission error so you know they
have to choose from 64 bits I figure out
which one is the wrong one and in order
to do that you don't really have to
count but you have to see okay where are
you know which row does have an odd
number of pics black pixels because that
row has Denis and error which column has
an odd number of black pixels and where
they touch each other at that
intersection that's the wrong pixel so
it's either a black pixel that should
have been white or white pixel that
should have been black yeah
and I love that if kids were to not get
that correct and you provide supporting
materials that kind of help facilitator
guide them through that process to
understand and we give them more
information and yo not during the
contest but afterwards in those
materials we talk about well this is an
error detecting code but it can only
detect one error because two errors good
error it could cancel each other out and
there are also error correcting codes
but for an error correcting code you
need much more extra bids to hand out
then we you know sometimes we get the
question well you know why would you use
an error correcting code when you can
just detect it and have it sent to you
again and you know Internet is so fast
and then we explain yeah but we're
sending missions you know marks to other
planets where it takes seven minutes for
a message to get there and in seven
minutes you get back the information
that something has gone wrong and then
another seven minutes to send it again
so it can take 21 minutes then before
you've resent some information so in
that case you want that error correcting
code and what are the age ranges or
groups that are for the vaporous we
start with kids that are six years old
but we have our age ranges usually in
two year ranges so there's six to eight
eight to ten ten to twelve twelve to
fourteen fourteen to sixteen and sixteen
to eighteen and so they all scale for
the age range like the difficulties and
whatnot yeah every age range gets their
own set of questions excellent and
sometimes yeah I mean we're computer
scientists right so we're lazy by
definition so sometimes we really use
tasks so we we can use a task or the ten
year olds and therefore then we say it's
a hard task and then we use it again for
the twelve year olds and there we say
it's a medium hard task and then for the
sixteen year olds we just use it as one
of the easy tasks to warm up with I
don't know if that's a lazy as much as
it is efficient but I hear you saying
yeah you bring it a little more positive
I try and what do you want like teachers
to know about how they could potentially
use paper I was like is this an online
thing it could they do it
pencil on paper or how would they use
this in a class the beauty here is that
it's completely online we have a
two-week period coming up soon actually
beginning November the first two weeks
of November they can just do it online
the kids need 45 minutes but they can
take any point in time during these two
weeks so we have a lot of school
districts where actually every school
takes part in every class has to take
part and all the kids have to take part
and the fun thing is that the kids love
doing it so that's really nice the
teacher does not have to prepare very
much because he just tells us I have so
many kids and then we will send him a
page with accounts that he can use for
the kids and it just it works itself and
then afterwards we send them the
materials and a lot of schools then use
those materials if they have a specific
teacher for this they say well there
were 15 tasks and we're going to be
spending ten weeks on these 15 tasks so
deeper into it finding extra materials
thinking more about it stuff like that
how else could kids practices I notice
there is an app on the website so we
have an app with the hundred tasks that
you can just download on iOS or an
Android and there are hundred fun
puzzles in there that you can just do
and have fun with doing and it's not
just children I mean we really try to
stimulate people to do this together
and so my in-laws you know I enjoy doing
it so they sat down together in front of
a fireplace this is North Dakota so it's
cold and they use the app and they spend
multiple hours just trying to solve the
problems and trying to come up with okay
why is this not working or is there a
smarter way of doing this yeah I think
the app would be an interesting way to
keep kids engaged if they finish a
project and you like let's say they
finish a project I supposed to take two
weeks they do it in a week well they
could go through these challenges like
during that time if you don't want them
to get too far ahead
right but we have more we have no I
sound like it you know one of those old
TV commercials but with there's more
vacuum cleaner does not only clean the
floors you can use the dumbest no but so
nice so there's there's more actually we
have a quiz software where a teacher can
create his own quizzes from the tasks
that we have in the system and so we
actually have some predefined tasks that
we suggest you them but they can just
mix and match and say okay I'm just
going to set the quiz for my kids I'm
just going to be using this and the
teacher can click on grades and the
system will grade it and the teacher can
download the results as well so I have a
bunch of schools that I know do
something like this at the beginning of
the school year and then at the end of
the school year just to see where their
kids are and they use it as an aptitude
test if I like that I enjoy that but my
best challenge in November is what I
call a motivational aptitude test I had
a school where the science department
was completely stressed out and
overworked but the language Department
said huh we can just do it I mean we'll
just know use one of our English lessons
and we'll do it and no problem and then
they found some kids that had been told
by their parents you know you're not
good at this
girls can't do this go for languages and
there were a couple of kids that they
found there that were really really good
at it and then switched into more
mathematical and computer science topics
just because they found out that they
liked it and they were good at it in
most countries we're very good at
measuring how well yeah kids perform at
sports how well they perform at
languages how well they perform at
mathematics but nobody measures how well
they perform at critical thinking
computational thinking logical thinking
you know the key word there is thinking
right we don't we don't measure that and
so speaking of the measurements and you
mentioned like a pretest post-test kind
of scenario how are researchers using
the baby s I delete all the data at the
end of the competition half a year later
uh-huh because I just don't want you
know any privacy rules to be king right
so I am we're not like Facebook where we
store every
I do have all the results from the past
years without the kids data so I know
the age range of the kids I know the
state and I know their gender okay and
that is already controversial because I
have researchers contact me saying that
they want me to ask race and
self-identified race and gender
self-identified gender gender at birth
right your racial subgroup skin color of
your friends yeah right yeah but you're
laughing but to me that's completely
ridiculous my goal is to reach everybody
and I don't care yeah I understand where
the researchers are coming from with
wanting that information it might be
helpful for their research interests but
they could engage in the papers on their
own and collect that kind of information
but I understand why you're removing
those kind of identifiers from it right
so when it comes to bedros we promise
the teachers and this is very important
we promise them that the results of the
kids from their school will never ever
be shared with other schools so no
matter if your kids do poorly or well no
other school will know having said that
we will show you a graph of how well
your school performs compared to all the
other schools in your state and to all
the other schools in the nation so the
teachers can see if they're doing better
or worse and I see here as well and the
funny thing that they go to their
principal or the principal goes to the
school district or sometimes to the
governor say look we need more money
because we're not performing as well
already go and they say look you know it
works that you give us money see we're
the best we need more money because we
want to stay the best but so these
things I think this is important I think
it's important if you if you're as
enthusiastic about these things as I am
that you want to try every venue to get
the resources so that's the teachers but
also the money and also the students to
get everything together
you create an environment that's
stimulating and motivating for all the
kids in bet chart does it break it down
into those subcategories or as they're
just overall your kids did this the
nation did this last year it was only
overall uh-huh but this year we are
showing the teachers a spider graph I
don't know if you know what that is
I don't think so it's a little chart
that looks like a spider web and then on
every side of the spider web is one of
those dimensions okay and we show how
well your kids did and how well the
nation did and how well the state did
huh so we will show you per domain how
well how well you're doing as your whole
age group excellent and then we also
show you your class list if you're
interested where you see the names of
your students below each other and then
you see the five domains as the columns
and then a color that indicates how well
everybody did
so then you will see the you know that
the excellent performers are horizontal
green lines and the domains that you're
good at are vertical green lines and the
Wieters are less green yeah I think
that'd be really helpful to get that
kind of feedback so I know a lot of
computer science educators they tend to
feel isolated they might be the only
person in their school or sometimes even
in their district that's doing this so
they don't know how their kids are doing
comparatively so this would be good
information have and another thing
that's interesting to know is I do this
as well in the United Kingdom
they have some good universities there
and I don't know if you if you've heard
of Oxford University yeah I think I've
heard of that before okay
at Oxford they say that if you've made
it to the finals of the Barrows in the
UK they want you to put that on your
application huh because your odds of
getting in are higher and I've heard
similar things about certain
universities in the US where they say
well kids should really put it in there
on there
if they're a high achiever at this and
they want to go to one of these big
universities put it in there and that's
that's why I also focus on you know the
Carolinas and Georgia with Clemson
because you know it's a good area the
friendly people but
they're not your logical choice if
they're looking for computer scientists
then you would go to you know the Bay
Area California we do another second
round in Erie Pennsylvania mm-hmm that's
close you know that's on the well I
wouldn't call it the Canadian border but
you can look at Canada from where
they're located
there's nothing around what we do for
multiple states around there the kids
come there they sometimes drive 12 hours
one way well you come to the finals and
to see me speak and to get all the
activities that the University organizes
during that day you're just having a
good time and then they say thank you
thank you thank you for this and they
come back it's great it's so if the
paper says done online why the in-person
second challenge the second round yeah
yeah well I do think it helps too for
those kids to actually see that thinking
can be a sport as well there are plenty
of people that play recreational tennis
or golf you will never ever see them on
the Wimbledon right we're on masters
tournament that nobody cares about that
well why is that not the same way for
thinking why can't we have these things
be fun yeah and have different leagues
and just go there and some of these kids
that show up have never been to a
tournament they come to this online
they're excited about it they're nervous
so the first thing we do we you know
welcome welcome welcome we give them
some food we put them into the room
where they work on the tasks and while
the kids are working on the tasks I
personally talk to the parents and
teachers and I give them the background
information on the problems that the
kids are working on at that point so
that during that 10 hour car ride home
they have something to talk about
interesting that's a really neat idea
well otherwise what are you gonna do you
you tell that you're laughing would you
tell the parents to drive for 10 hours
and you leave them alone sit in a corner
with a book while we do something fun
with their kids well why don't we engage
the parents as well because I really
find when it comes to computational
thinking this comes back in your life
all the time
even when driving to the university or
driving home usually there are multiple
routes though you try to optimize
something but how do you optimize and
then you get into the whole thing where
you know the real hard core computer
geeks think that they know best because
they have the algorithm that knows best
but you may want to drive a different
route because you like the scenery
better right or because there are fewer
traffic jams all these things are valid
arguments when evaluating an algorithm
right but I tell this to the parents and
I tell that why don't you talk about
these things with your kids all the time
bring it into the home curriculum as
well now why are we doing this why are
we doing it this way so the resources
that are shared with the teachers of us
also shared with parents do they have
that opportunity to look at the after
the tests are done or the challengers
have done they get the Supplemental
resources that explain things well not
after the first round we send those
resources only to teachers so we try to
get the schools engaged yeah and in or
participate you have to go through the
school and there's a teacher that
actually arranges it but after the
second round you know we share stuff
with the parents and you know sometimes
they send me e-mail messages afterwards
and I just respond to that because I
just love doing this yeah I think that's
a really good strategy and I think
teachers who do the first round of it I
think it would be good for them to also
reach out to parents and potentially
even share like here's what we did in
class today and then if you want to
learn more maybe you can check out XYZ
so you can talk with your kids about it
just to further encourage that learning
right and the the thing here that's
that's funny and it got actually sad is
that though I run this as a volunteer
right mm-hmm and so there's no money
involved this is just you know I run a
company as well where I try to make my
money and this is you know 40 days per
year that are just my volunteer and
contribution and nobody wants to sponsor
it because everybody says there's a
problem in the workforce we don't have
enough computer scientists we know we
don't have enough thinkers and then I
say but I'm reaching out to all these
kids that are 8 to 12 for
and they're like yeah but they weren't
coming to the workforce until ten years
from now and we can't wait that long and
all I keep saying is you know if you'd
listened to me six years ago
you got to start at some point right and
this is why I engage the parents as well
and the teachers as well because I find
that if you can convince the parents and
teachers that this is fun and you can
convince them well the kid is still
under twelve your day will still have a
positive influence and the kids will
still listen it makes no sense to
convince a parent of a 17 year old
because that 17 year old has already
made up their minds and you know no
longer listens to the parents
but the young won't still listen and the
younger ones still pick that up so I
think you know I want to motivate the
kids but I think part of that is also
just you know getting the parents
enthusiastic yeah I think that's a great
mission and iPod you for that well thank
you of course what is I oh I
okay can I compare it to bevor us a
little bit yeah please do okay so
baburao's is aimed at everybody
Debra's is aimed at the top 99 percent
of the kids but there's always the
bottom 1% where you know this is too
hard this doesn't work if you can't read
or you know there's no way to do this
although we do have stuff for blind
people as well that's great but I you I
heisting the other end of the spectrum
ioi is about computer programming
algorithmic programming specifically
it's aimed at the top 1% of the
population and maybe the top point zero
zero one percent of the population it's
really really hard but it's about
programming it's about algorithms in ioi
every program is you know there's a
little story and then basically the
question is read some ridiculously large
set of data from somewhere and tell us
something about the data here is a graph
of a country tell us what is the
shortest path from A to B that would be
a trivial problem and the IUI level but
it's programming and because it's aimed
at older
and it's so much abstract yet so much
easier to judge its it has an
international final so in the US there's
the United States computing Olympia the
USA Co which is organized by my friend
Brian Dean and so he's a professor in
the u.s. he arranges the US team I am
the coach of the Dutch team so I do the
Netherlands and then every year we meet
in summer in some random country where
we bring all the students and they get
together for one week and two two days
of that week are about computer
programming these problems are really
hard and it's not a spectator sport so
you have five hours to solve three
problems so you're looking at 200 300
children sitting still behind the
computer for five hours and then at the
end we pick a winner I explained it once
to my wife by saying yes you know you're
watching a brick wall for five hours and
at the end someone decides which brick
is best sounds riveting yeah but the
rounds that come before that are
extremely fun and you can learn a lot
the USA CEO has two rounds and so the
two groups I mean the bronze group and
the Silver's and then the golds and you
can move from leak to leak if you do
really well in one league you move to a
higher league within the league you just
learn a lot and the tasks are more at
your level and that's one thing that you
have in athletics as well but that's
also what's fun to have in computer
science if I give you a problem that is
so hard that it feels like I'm hitting
you with a brick on your nose you get
disappointed pretty fast right but if I
give you a problem that feels like I'm
throwing a pillow at your nose and you
just have to dodge it then you may not
be able to dodge it every time or you're
not fast enough but it doesn't hurt as
much and by the time your reflexes get
better you're like you bring out the
brakes Kim it's wear a helmet stay safe
oh we're we're helmet wear a helmet sure
this your curling parents you don't have
that term in the US the curling the
sport
yeah but the current and parents know
what's that Oh
curling parents that's a term in Europe
where you have parents that will never
ever let their kids pull or suffer or
get hurt because they always have the
little broom and they're in front make
sure everything goes as smooth as
possible for the child and they end up
exactly where they should end up that I
you know what I think that is a very
appropriate term that I think some
people in the US should probably try and
adopt I've seen some parents like that
no but so ioi is fun it's a nice
community and once you meet all these
kids that make it to ioi there's so much
fun but they're also so much in their
element because some of these top
performers they've been yeah
geeky their whole life and to me geek is
a compliment but and nerd is a
compliment these are I think of all
these things probably the wrong way but
I look at them as compliment and these
are my people I like to hang out with
all he said all these kids and I like to
hang out with the teachers that are
there the other coaches and while we sit
there you know the night before the
competition the tasks are being brought
out and I'm getting goosebumps just
thinking about it you know but so the
night before the first competition day
we around 8 o'clock we get the tasks as
the leaders so the quarantine starts the
kids are in a different hotel we get the
tasks and we look at the tasks and read
them and then people start screaming at
each other is oh this is horrible and
how can they do this oh this is clever
and then they sit and we discussed them
for two hours and then usually everybody
just loves them and then we translate
them because this is not a competition
about who is the best English speaker
this is a competition about who's the
best programmer in L in the for
algorithmic programs and just as you
would probably agree that would be
unfair if we would give German tasks to
the US team it's unfair if you give
English tasks to the German team and I
have to explain it this way because
quite often in the u.s. people ask well
everybody speaks English right and if
they don't they should just learn to
speak English
and I like yeah that's not how it works
in the rest of the world so it gets
translated but we do that throughout the
night some some countries are still
translating at 4:00 in the morning and
then at nine o'clock the contest starts
all the kids get into a big usually it's
a sports venue because it takes up so
much space sit down and then the contest
gets started and then it's dead silent
for five hours in that whole audience
hall and now while that's happening I
run the live broadcast where you know we
show footage from the contest hall but
like I said that's pretty boring but
then I bring in the people that have
made up the tasks and we discuss the
tasks the background how should you
solve this but we also bring out the
people that look after the kids
so every team gets assigned a team guide
that's usually a local boy or girl that
speaks the local language and will help
out these kids and so we bring them out
and y'all ask them what are the names of
your kids and then they mispronounce the
names obviously and they're always proud
of the students that they have to look
after and they're proud of their country
and I know that this is one of the
favorite parts for most of the parents
because they had to send their kids to
Azerbaijan this year or Russia or
Singapore or you know any of these
countries they send their kids there
with random people and then they love
seeing that the people that are there
actually look after them yeah and I will
say having watched some of the
broadcasts it's really interesting
seeing you talk with somebody about the
thought process he's involved with like
different ways that you could solve
something so one of the ones that you
did for this past summer was I'm talking
about ordering pairs of shoes yeah make
sure that it's always left right left
right acceptable and it's starting out
of order and then talking through well
you could do it this way but here's
another way you could do it so it was
interesting to watch and to learn from
that and just as kind of see those
different processes that somebody could
take for the same problem exactly and
and that's what we do because remember
the idea of the ioi is yes we want to
pick a winner
but we'd like to have a ranking where we
can rank 320 kids from number one to
number 320 with as few Tice's as
possible so whenever we come up with a
problem we try to have it in a way where
there are maybe multiple strategies
where one is a great strategy and one is
you know not as great and you know we'll
give you more points for the best
strategy
right and that way we can rank kids yep
and so I oh I standing for International
Olympiad in informatics how would you
describe what informatics is to a kid
who might not have heard that word
before this is unfair because the Iowa
is called informatics but it's about a
tiny narrow little corner of the whole
field of Informatics
okay so ioi is not at all about
informatics ioi is about algorithms and
data structures okay
informatics is much wider informatics is
about you know computers in society
informatics is about networks
information security yes data structures
and programming and algorithms are part
of it but there's so much more you know
user interface design is part of
informatics as well I have a master's
degree in computer science I graduated
on the field of computational humor so
interesting uh-huh having the computer
generate jokes and that be possible
spoiler alert no no but sometimes stuff
that the computer does while trying to
generate jokes is actually funny but not
because it's you know funny by itself
it's funny because you know the computer
tried to do something and it did it so
horribly wrong right funny
that's really interesting I hadn't
considered that like I've looked into
algorithmic like music generation and
things like that I've experimented with
that on my own but I hadn't thought
about it for humor that's fascinating it
is isn't it
so the ioi kids would be traveling to
different parts of the world are there
like
scholarship funds or opportunities to
assist with that travel for kids who
might not be able to afford it
so the ioi is based on national
delegations okay
the national delegations fund the travel
for their national team so for for
students there are a few countries that
don't have enough money and then they
come with fewer people but so so most
countries can find the money for four
kids and one or two team leaders to get
to the international final and there is
a few that can't and for those if
someone's willing to sponsor it
seriously give me a call send me an
e-mail message because I know good ways
to you know use that money to give more
kids an opportunity are there other
questions that I haven't asked about IOI
or vaporous that you would like to
discuss you haven't really asked about
the community so the ioi is a community
all these kids that are there they're
happy for each other they play together
because they're there for a week and
there are only two competition days on
the other competition days there are
cultural events where you see the host
country so there's the cultural event at
Iowa where all the kids get together
they go on excursions together sometimes
to an amusement park sometimes to a film
studio like we did last year in Japan we
went to the eternal flames and this year
in Azerbaijan we were even in Iran a
couple of years ago and we saw loads of
cultural stuff there and the kids hang
out together they play some some kids
are really good at playing the piano or
the guitar they sing and they play
little games and these I think that
whole community thing where everybody
feels at home you're accepted for who
you are is just a great thing and it's
also one of the goals of our UI though
ioi has as a goal do you find the best
kids but also to have the leaders of
tomorrow
mingle meet each other and figure out
that oh that person is actually just a
person just like I am I really
appreciate that you brought up the
community aspect of ioi I definitely
think that's an important thing do you
have any questions for myself or that
you'd like to pose for the
for hopefully people to pick up and
build off of for the future well I mean
my main questions I would like to have
more people in the u.s. help me out
reaching more people in the US because
it's a little bit insane that Here I am
in the Netherlands as a volunteer with
an American wife and American children
but trying to you know bring as many
teachers in the u.s. into this field and
we work together with some researchers
and with some universities for second
rounds but I'd love to just have second
rounds in more States right and I'd like
to have some of the I mean I know you're
from Arizona and I've spoken with some
people from Arizona once and they said
that when it comes to education
Arizona was in the bottom 10% of the US
generally and they were interested in
you know bringing memberís out to the
you know the rural areas of Arizona but
they said yet the problem is that nobody
really wants to sponsor it there's no
the government doesn't and I don't know
if the government doesn't care maybe
they just don't have the right contact
but I would love it if we could set
something up like Australian us in
Australia there is a team of three women
then go rural and they just go from
school to school and that's what they do
they're on the road for 10 weeks
non-stop where every day they go to
another school and they do member us
on-site in that school where they give
extra information to the parents and
teachers some teacher instructions and I
would love it if we could get something
like that going a grassroots movement in
the u.s. in a single state first where
we use that to you know bring you from
the bottom 10% to the top 10% so where
would you recommend people go to learn
more about favour us and ioi or to be
able to reach out to you to get more
information and potentially start well
if you so if you want to know more about
barrows you just go to WWE bras
challenge org oh that's that's where you
learn about be bras but you don't really
learn about me there if you're in the US
and you want to know about more about I
you I I would really suggest
you go to USA co.org the United States
of America computing Olympiad org
because they also have the USA SEO
training pages where they will teach you
programming and they'll teach you about
algorithms and they have problems that
get more and more difficult and probably
a little too slow I mean 20 years ago
this was the thing you wanted to go
through if you wanted to win our UI
these days if you go through this that's
your starting level when you can
actually start understanding what
happens at i/o I cuz I UI is moved on as
well but it's a great resource and they
have their challenges and then
competitions and they're different
rounds all the time so that is what I
would suggest you go for X if people
just want to reach out to me you know
just send me a message at Elliot Kim at
gmail.com and I will you know respond as
quickly as I can because this is what I
do and this is what my life is is there
anything else that I haven't asked that
you like to talk about um what's
interesting and I don't know if it's a
true motivator I mean it's not something
I would like the kids to be motivated by
but if you make it to ioi and you win
the medal there and that means you're in
the top half because half the kids at
i/o I get a medal if you win a medal at
i/o I you're basically guaranteed an
internship at Google Facebook HP
Microsoft Instagram all these big
companies all the tech companies they
love the people that have come to IO I
now if that is the type of motivation
that you want people to have I don't
know and I also have a couple of friends
that did go to IU I on my team decided
not to go to college and just want it to
work but you know having been to Iowa is
not only great experience it's also just
you know a career building step I would
like to know more about your music stuff
what are you her music stuff so I'm a
percussionist both my wife and I um play
the drums
so my background was in music education
and so like I taught
music and band and drum line and all
that stuff and then I started dabbling
with some coding stuff that related to
music like creating software music apps
or creating like an algorithmic drum set
like stuff like that uh-huh and just
kept going down this path of well when
is this music when is this coding and
when is it the two inseparable and like
not having an answer to that I went back
into the classroom after I finished
school and I started teaching k-8 coding
classes five-year-olds through what
would that be like 12 year olds 13 year
olds uh-huh how to program and it was
all arts based so like kids were like
creating animations and art and stories
and games and music and they could pick
from all these different subject areas
that they wanted to apply coding to then
that led me to my current position where
I create curriculum and oversee
professional development okay cool it's
kind of like all tied together I had
initially when I was in high school I
wanted to be a programmer because of the
pay and when I was in the class the
teacher would give us a month worth of
assignments I'd finish it in a week and
then there would be nothing to do for
three weeks so I'd be really bored so I
was like okay well music is challenging
me a lot and is helping me out so I went
into music education because I just
wanted to help people
so although I could have made way more
money coming into programming I went
into education because of the challenge
involved with music and then came back
to programming through education thank
you so much for taking the time to
listen to this interview I really hope
you got something out of this if you'd
like to find out more about the babe
rest challenge or ioi remember to please
check the show notes at jared O'Leary
comm you'll also find all the links that
can mention in it and just a friendly
reminder if you enjoy this episode
please consider subscribing so you can
hear the next one the next episode that
is actually coming out on the same day
as this one is me unpacking some
scholarship
Guest Bio
Eljakim Schrijvers has a MSc degree in Computer Science from Twente University, The Netherlands. After getting his degree he founded a software firm that builds software for various sectors. He spends all his free time volunteering for Bebras and IOI (International Olympiad in Informatics). Eljakim has been the coach and delegation leader for The Netherlands since 1994. He also serves as treasurer for the international committee of IOI. Eljakim runs the technical side of Bebras and various other STEM contests in over 30 countries and is the contest director for both the USA and The Netherlands. Eljakim lives close to Amsterdam.
For Bebras questions: eljakim@bebraschallenge.org
For generic STEM contest questions: eljakim@cuttle.org
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