Daily and summer camps for children are certainly well
known to every adult. They provide many activities that encourage interests,
create opportunities to start new friendships and, last but not least,
help parents with the child care when they are unable to take holidays.
However, camps designed as a support for contests in the form as we are
presenting them here are unique, established in former Czechoslovakia
by V´ıt and Milan Hejn´y in the late 70s. In this paper, we provide a basic
outline of the structure of these programming camps for high school
students, we describe the daily program, and introduce the games and activities
used to attract and educate participants. Our hope is to provide
a comprehensive overview that can serve as a guideline for organizing
similar camps in other countries, and in this way to draw the attention
of the talented students, to help them to prepare for the contests like the
International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) and to encourage them to
choose a career in computing.
From Monika Steinová, Juliana Sisková im Konferenz-Band Teaching Fundamental Concepts of Informatics (2010) in the text Programming Camps