Fifteen Molfetta – The Fibonacci games reward the students of Savio di Molfetta with two medals

MOLFETTA – Only two years ago, with the patronage of the Ministry of Education and Merit, the committee of the Italian IT championships launched a programming competition dedicated to primary and lower secondary schools and entitled it “Fibonacci games ”. We could ask ourselves what sense this competition makes in a historical moment in which everyone is looking at artificial intelligence. Why introduce little ones to programming when, within a decade, humans could be replaced by machines in this creative activity? Maybe this competition is dictated by nostalgia? In reality, writing computer programs, in addition to having radically changed the society in which we live, has always emerged as an intellectually rewarding activity that puts the logical abilities of both adults and children to the test, and which develops only the same logic but also many other skills, such as observation, common sense, the ability to summarize, patience and others. There are many good reasons to encourage our kids to program, which does not mean making them become programmers by profession. Fibonacci, whose real name was Leonardo Bonacci, one of the greatest mathematicians of all times, is cited today mainly for his famous sequence, which he introduced in a playful way, via a riddle about the speed of reproduction of rabbits. Hence the idea of ​​building all the tests of the Fibonacci games around a little rabbit, Bunny, full of initiative but always in need of a hand. The kids are asked to get Bunny out of his troubles by inventing and implementing a special algorithm in a few minutes. Under the video game guise there are puzzles that put even teachers to the test; do you think kids get scared? Indeed, some remain perplexed, but very few give up. In this school year the Savio school in Molfetta participated for the first time in the Fibonacci games, thanks to the fundamental help of another school in Molfetta, the Galileo Ferraris institute which first dragged Savio into this pleasant adventure and subsequently offered a free afternoon programming course to thirteen selected students. The Savio boys who participated in the first phase of the games were 48. Half of these won the right to play in the semi-final. From that point on, the selection became very tough: a maximum of two places in the final available for each Italian school. The semi-final on March 13th was very balanced and hard-fought. Many boys and girls who deserved recognition and who came one step away from realizing their dream. They will have the chance to try again next year! Only one student from 1st A and one from 2nd A reached the final on April 23rd. The final presented a novelty: each competitor was required to connect via video call with a referee who ensured the regularity of the competition, i.e. that no competitor received suggestions. To give an idea of ​​the difficulty of the last race, it lasted three uninterrupted hours and no boy in all of Italy managed, in that time, to completely solve the four questions posed. The ranking remained secret until the awards ceremony on May 14, a day that gave Savio a lot of satisfaction. Our two finalists each received a bronze medal. Cristiano Casarola ranked twenty-ninth, Claudio De Bari thirty-first. To put the result into context, 116 secondary schools with a total of 6616 students had registered for the competition. Only five kids from central-southern Italy, from Lazio downwards, have won prizes and, of these five, two attend Savio! At its debut in the competition, our school was among the top twenty in the medal table, second school in the central-south. We hope to capitalize on this experience and reach even higher levels in future editions. Professor Anna Brancaccio, director of the ministry present at the awards ceremony, noted and underlined that the majority of the prizes went to the North and explained the phenomenon with the greater propensity of schools in the North to get involved, that is, to give themselves the organization necessary to obtain significant results. This is your personal opinion. The numbers prove her right. Let’s hope for a little longer!