The Canadian Innovation Computing Contest, popularly known as CICC, is an initiative by Competitive Kids STEM. This contest aims to cultivate students’ creativity, logical reasoning ability, and algorithmic & computational thinking skills. Students will be able to better understand computational thinking by developing solutions. It involves defining problems, analyzing problems and designing their solutions. Prior programming knowledge is optional to participate in this contest.

Canadian Computing Innovation Contest (CICC) is carefully designed for teachers to provide an excellent enrichment opportunity to their students.

Several Canadian Curriculums for Science and Technology outline the skills and knowledge that students will develop, as well as the attitudes that they need to develop to use their knowledge and skills responsibly. The three goals are as follows:

• To relate science and technology to society and the environment
• To develop the skills, strategies, and habits of mind required for scientific inquiry and technological problem-solving
• To understand the basic concepts of science and technology

The Canadian Innovation Computing Contest aligns with these goals and focuses on computational thinking. This concept includes:

• Decomposition - breakdown of a problem or task into smaller steps or pieces.
• Pattern recognition - to recognize trends, patterns and regularities to make sense of data.
• Abstraction - Identifying and extracting relevant information. The process of ignoring or removing unnecessary information.
• Modelling & Simulation - Developing a model to imitate processes and problems.
• Algorithms - a set of instructions to follow to solve a problem.
• Evaluation - determining the effectiveness of the solution and its application.

CICC questions focus on age-appropriate problems to meet the students' expectations as outlined in curriculum goals.

• Eligibility: Grades 3-10
• Contest Dates:
• School Proctored: Anytime between April 22^nd and May 3^rd, 2024, without taking any help from devices, humans, or other resources.
• Individual - Unproctoted: Anytime between May 4^th and May 8^th, 2024, without taking any help from devices, humans, or other resources.
• 4 Contest Levels - Grades 3/4, 5/6, 7/8, and 9/10
• Online Test Format: 10 multiple-choice problems and five written answer problems within 45 minutes related to the six skills required for computation thinking.
• Logistics: The contest will be held online.
• Practice Content: Optional practice content is available to all the students for free. Though not mandatory, it offers additional enrichment opportunities to the students. The focus is on solving questions that allow students to analyze problems & design solutions.
• Practice tests are available for students to attempt similar problems.
• Detailed solutions are provided as well for deeper understanding.

• Gold Awards: Top 1% of students for each contest level. The award includes a customized medal & e-certificate.
• Silver Awards: Top 2-3% of students for each contest level. The award includes a customized medal & e-certificate.
• Bronze Awards: Top 4-6% of students for each contest level. The award includes a customized medal & e-certificate.
• Honors Award: up to the top 10% of students in each participating school based on the minimum cut-off. It includes a customized medal & e-certificate. Individual participants will also be eligible for this award.
• Certificate of participation: Given to all participants​.

* Due to resource constraints, only personalized e-certificates will be sent to students and teachers outside Canada. We intend to provide everyone with the opportunity to participate and gain experience.

• If you are a school staff interested in participating, contact us at info@ckstem.org. We will get you started within a week.
• If you are an individual participant, you can enroll here. You must create the first if you don't have an account at our contest portal already. You can find instructions to create your account account at https://www.competitivekids.org/blog/registration.

You can download the Canadian Innovation Contests (CIC) brochure from here.