First Bangladesh Scratch Olympiad will be at DU IT Institute on 21st October
Bangladesh Scratch Olympiad 2023 will be held for the first time on October 21. The students from class 1 to class 8 can directly participate in this Olympiad in any of the 3 categories in Information Technology Institute of Dhaka University. It will start from 2:30 pm and will continue till 5 pm.
Scratch Bangladesh, Dhaka University Institute of Information Technology, Maqsudul Alam Science Lab (MasLab) and Bangladesh Open Source Network (BDOSN) are jointly organizing the event as part of the "Sheikh Russell Day" celebration.
Due to automation, computerization and digitization in the use of information and communication technology worldwide, the demand for technicians and computer programmers is increasing in our country. The process of learning programming from the school level has also started in Bangladesh to build an efficient nation in information and communication technology. But since the language of programming is not easy for school level students, BDOSN is trying to teach programming in Bengali. Earlier BDOSN worked on localization (translation) of programming language Scratch (Scratch.mit.edu) into Bengali language as a result of which Bengali language was added to Scratch.mit.edu website.
Scratch is a block-based visual programming language, through which students of any age from primary school students can easily learn programming logic. By learning Scratch, students can create games, animation videos and cartoons. Programming in Scratch does not require learning any code, it provides an interactive interface, which makes the process very easy to understand. In addition to programming on Scratch website in 70 languages of the world, since Bangla has recently been added, from now on Scratch can also be coded in Bengali language. This is a new milestone for our Bengali language which has opened new doors for primary school students of our country to learn programming. Students need to know computer programming to be proficient in future technology fields. To this end the Government of Bangladesh has included programming education in the school curriculum.
BDOSN is working to make students proficient in MIT-invented Scratch programming with an aim to spread computer programming among students.
With the cooperation of electronics company Newton, with the aim of making programming practice popular and easier among school-college students of the country, students of all levels starting from primary school are getting the benefit of translating Scratch programming language into Bengali.
