AI talent training should start with dolls, and the Blue Bridge Cup Youth Group Competition promotes the popularization of science literacy education

Fueled by the artificial intelligence boom, this year's Blue Bridge Cup youth category set a new record for the event. As a leading national science and technology competition in China, the Blue Bridge Cup is an important competition project for higher education teaching reform and innovative talent training, which strongly supports the comprehensive assessment, scholarship evaluation and even postgraduate entrance examination of registered students with the certification of the competition, and cultivates and selects a large number of outstanding talents for the development of the information technology industry in the mainland.

Since 2016, the "Blue Bridge Cup" has added a creative programming group for primary and secondary schools (referred to as the youth group), and in 2022, the Blue Bridge Cup National Software and Information Technology Professional Competition has been included in the white list competition by the Ministry of Education. Relying on the mature event organization and talent training system of the Blue Bridge Cup, the Blue Bridge Cup Youth Group Competition has become one of the most valuable events in mainland youth programming, and has strong authority and appeal among schools and parents.

Use competitions to stimulate interest in learning and consolidate young people's scientific literacy ability

Although it does not have a fierce "competition atmosphere" like basketball, football and other competitive sports, the Blue Bridge Cup Youth Creative Programming Competition has become the "programming Olympics" that many children look forward to the most. From the provincial competition to the national competition, more than 100,000 teenagers from all over the country have engaged in fierce "brain competition" around programming.

"Through the clearance competition from the provincial competition to the national competition, it is not only one thing to test the children's phased learning results, but more importantly, it greatly stimulates the children's enthusiasm for programming learning." An institutional teacher who has organized students to participate in the Blue Bridge Cup competition for many years in a row said, "The experience of participating in the national competition itself is a great sense of accomplishment, which can make children more and more motivated in their later learning. As children learn to code, it is very beneficial to establish this incentive mechanism and positive feedback. ”

The guidance and cultivation of scientific interest should start with dolls. In 2021, the double reduction policy was introduced, and all-round multi-dimensional quality education with the goal of building a high-quality education system has been mentioned many times in the policy. As an important tool and means for all-round multi-dimensional quality education and artificial intelligence talent training, science literacy education represented by programming competitions is just in time.

In the organization of the competition, the Blue Bridge Cup Youth Group has continuously optimized the mechanism, so that it has multiple functions such as selecting programming professional ability and enhancing young people's programming interest and scientific literacy. Mr. Zhang Wei, secretary general of the Youth Group of the Blue Bridge Cup Organizing Committee, said that at the beginning of its establishment, the original intention of the Blue Bridge Cup Youth Group was to promote programming education to primary and secondary school students, stimulate the creativity and challenge of young people through high-intensity professional competition models and fair and transparent incentive mechanisms, and then drive more and more primary and secondary school students to recognize, contact and try programming learning, and cultivate basic talents for the national artificial intelligence field from the source.

The historical achievements of the Blue Bridge Cup have also been recognized by relevant education associations and local authorities, and have been selected into the "National General University Discipline Competition Ranking" of the China Higher Education Association for four consecutive years, and have been included in the provincial competition list by Jiangsu, Sichuan, Gansu, Liaoning, Guizhou, Ningxia and other provinces. Ni Guangnan, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Chinese Computer Society, and chief expert of the Blue Bridge Cup Competition, said, "The 'Blue Bridge Cup' has shaped the country's leading talent training and selection model with examinations to promote learning, and has been deeply recognized by the industry."

Build a multi-level education system for artificial intelligence and promote the popularization of education for AI talents

The Ministry of Education's "Artificial Intelligence Innovation Action Plan for Colleges and Universities" mentioned that it is necessary to "improve the talent training system in the field of artificial intelligence, carry out universal education, and build a multi-level education system of artificial intelligence", with special emphasis on the introduction of artificial intelligence universal education at the primary and secondary school level.

The emergence of ChatGPT is seen as the "iPhone moment" of the era of artificial intelligence. As the most crushing global technology trend after the Internet, artificial intelligence is becoming the most critical variable in the next round of industrial upgrading revolution. As the main battlefield of the science and technology competition of big countries, whether it can achieve corner overtaking, the core infrastructure of the artificial intelligence competition is the cultivation of talents. Western developed countries have long begun to layout, in the United States, programming education has entered kindergartens and primary and secondary school classrooms, while the United Kingdom has included programming in the syllabus and has become a compulsory course for children aged 6-15.

The Blue Bridge Cup Programming Competition is currently the only whitelist programming competition of the Ministry of Education for college students and primary and secondary school students in mainland China, and after more than ten years of development and improvement, it has become one of the most important infrastructures for the education, selection and training of artificial intelligence talents in mainland China. The data shows that the Blue Bridge Cup University Group and Youth Group have attracted millions of students to sign up for the competition, with more than 3,000 participating universities and more than 11,000 off-campus institutions, building one of the most important "family-school-society" platforms for talent training in the field of artificial intelligence in the mainland.

On the basis of the growing influence of the "Blue Bridge Cup" competition, Blue Bridge has further implemented a multi-dimensional and precise artificial intelligence talent training layout. The Blue Bridge College, which was established offline for college students, cooperates with 5,000+ enterprises to jointly formulate talent training plans, joint teaching, and introduce projects into the school; At the same time, the Blue Bridge Yunke training platform, Blue Bridge online education platform, and Blue Bridge teacher empowerment SaaS platform for college students will be built online, and the construction of cutting-edge computer majors will be carried out from laboratory construction, talent training, education resource library construction, teacher empowerment and other aspects, promote the construction of related industries in the region, and provide systematic support and assistance for students, teachers and colleges in related fields. In addition, Blue Bridge also provides employment consultation, famous enterprise transportation, study abroad services and Blue Bridge public welfare scholarships for talents in related fields, and devotes itself to the cultivation and service of scientific and technological talents in an all-round way. As of May this year, the "Blue Bridge Youth Scholarship Program" has successfully organized four applications and distribution of public welfare scholarships, with thousands of young people across the country participating.

Many forward-thinking parents have realized that giving their children some programming skills and mastering the underlying language of communicating with AI is a wiser choice than worrying about whether the job will be replaced by AI. The root cause of the "popularity" of the Blue Bridge Cup Youth Group registration this year is, on the one hand, the background of the era of artificial intelligence forcing the reform of educational concepts and talent training, and on the other hand, it is also the professional attraction of the youth programming education and training competition system that it has focused on building for more than ten years. Under the "east wind" of the era trend of artificial intelligence with ChatGPT as a milestone, and the demand for non-subject quality education released by the "double reduction" policy, this huge Blue Bridge Cup competition is bound to continue to burn.