40 children from all over Saxony were guests at the Görlitz campus for the state competition as the second stage of the Saxon Computer Science Competition
The Saxon Computer Science Competition (SIW) has been held annually at the beginning of the school year since 1997. With almost 5,000 participants from elementary school, schools with a special focus on learning, secondary schools and grammar schools, it is the second largest computer science competition in Germany. It is organized by the Landesverband Sächsischer Jugendbildungswerke (LJBW) e.V. (Saxon Youth Education Association).
On March 14, primary school pupils from all over Saxony competed in the 2nd stage of the Saxon Computer Science Competition at the HSZG Görlitz campus. Out of over 900 participants in the regional competitions, 40 children from Zwickau, Chemnitz, Leipzig, Dresden and Upper Lusatia qualified for this state competition. The young talents demonstrated their theoretical knowledge in a knowledge test, showed their creativity in designing a poster and applied algorithmic thinking in solving a programming task. The participants were also required to obtain information from the Internet, which they did with great skill.
The accompanying persons were able to attend presentations on research operations and services during the competition. The topics ranged from AI for early forest fire detection and autonomous driving to IT security with a live demonstration of an attack.
After the lunch break in the canteen - which provided sumptuous portions of food - things got fairytale-like: the crazy bookmaker, a fictional character created by artist Tom Hohlfeld, urgently needed help! He called on the children to help him with his fairy tale.
Equipped with a map and tablet, the children set off in small groups in search of several stations where they had to solve tasks as a team. From the initially disorganized notes, several small stories gradually emerged, which were woven into a common whole at the end.
When everyone came back together, they plugged in their tablets, placed the rings on the portal opener (a flatbed scanner) and signaled to the crazy bookmaker that the order had been restored. He thanked the children warmly and pointed to a little secret that still needed to be discovered. Each child received a bookmaker's coin - and this magically gave them access to the real-time fairy tale they had experienced themselves (a YouTube URL that could be accessed via NFC).
To shorten the children's waiting time for the official announcement of the results on May 5, there was also a fairy tale quiz with small prizes in keeping with this year's theme of "fairy tales".
In April 2025, the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences hosted the first Regio-Challenge Oberlausitz as part of the Saxon IT competition. Around 50 pupils from grades 3 to 12 competed against each other in creative and practical competition formats.
The Regio-Challenge is a project to regionalize the Saxon Computer Science Competition and was sponsored by the "Digital School Saxony" initiative, which is coordinated by Prof. Längrich. Andrea Skuras, principal of Diesterweg Primary School in Görlitz, was responsible for organizing the competition at elementary school level and supported it as a home advantage and observer. The contact person for the project was Anja Carstensen from Digital School Saxony.
