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The IITPSA Computer Olympiad is one of the oldest and biggest competitions of its kind in the world and has been held since 1983. The format of the Olympiad was adapted in 1987, 2003 and again in 2010. Some schools have very few computers and many schools have no computers at all. To enable participation from these schools, the current format makes it possible for participants to do the Talent Search without computers.
The Programming Olympiad is for IT learners and others who can program. Each participant needs access to a computer with a programming language installed. For this First Round any programming language will do.
The Applications Olympiad is for CAT learners, ICDL candidates and the computer literate from all grades. Learners need access to a computer with an office package installed and a printer.
The Talent Search is an aptitude test to indicate who should consider a career in ICT and who not. This round does not need the use of computers nor any specific computer skills. Many schools use this round to guide grade 9 learners with subject choices and grade 12 learners with career choices. The paper consists of a number of problem-solving tasks and pen and paper programming tasks such as writing a program to guide a robot through a maze.
The Standard Bank IT Challenge is held principally for universities in South Africa. The Challenge aims to show both programming ability and teamwork with limited resources. Teams are made up of four members, one of whom acts as Team Manager. To ensure teams reflect the student population, and to create opportunities for more students, teams need to include members from both genders and at least one member from a historically disadvantaged background. Each team is supplied with one PC only and access to a single printer. The heats are used to select the universities that will be invited to the finals. In addition, participating universities use the heats to select one team to represent the university. For the heats the teams compete at their own universities under supervision of a proctor. The finals are at held a central venue where the teams are hosted by Standard Bank.
