Unacademy Announces Go-For-Gold Initiative for School Students
Bengaluru: Unacademy, India’s leading learning platform, has announced the Go-For-Gold Initiative for Indian school students participating in the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) 2021. The IOI is one of the most prestigious UNESCO-recognized Olympiads in programming and informatics for school students.
The Go-For-Gold Initiative was started by CodeChef in the year 2013 to bridge the gap in talent and train aspiring contestants for the IOI examination. Unacademy took over the custodianship of CodeChef in June 2020. As part of the Go-For-Gold initiative, Unacademy will award a cash prize worth Rs. 15 lakhs, along with a laptop and other rewards to any Indian student winning a gold medal at IOI 2021.
Anup Kalbalia, CodeChef Business Head at Unacademy says “We are extremely elated that Unacademy has decided to carry forward CodeChef’s Go-For-Gold initiative which aims to prepare Indian school students to excel at the prestigious IOI. With Unacademy at our side, we aim to accelerate our efforts to create awareness across the country about inculcating problem-solving & informatics in the school curriculum early on. Although true, it is not widely known that programming can actually be learned without using a computer, through interactive means like puzzles, building logic, and computational thinking.”
CodeChef has also started a free Learning Program for IOI preparation on Unacademy’s platform. The Learning Program consists of topic-wise live classes, recorded videos & doubt-resolution sessions led by CodeChef volunteers.
IOI, ICO, and CodeChef
Every year, 4 students each from 85+ countries participate in IOI. The top 4 Indian students who participate in IOI are selected through a national-level Olympiad called the Indian Computing Olympiad (ICO). ICO is conducted by the Indian Association for Research in Computing Science (IARCS) in association with CodeChef & TCS iON.
The steps & schedule to reach IOI 2021 for Indian school students are:
1. The Zonal Informatics Olympiad (ZIO): ZIO is the first round of ICO and will be held on 19th December 2020. No programming is required for this round. Last date for registration is December 7. To register, click here: https://learning.tcsionhub.in/exams/ico_2021/
2. Indian National Olympiad in Informatics (INOI): To be held in February 2021. 250 students from ZIO will be shortlisted for INOI. C++ is a mandatory programming requirement for this round.
3. IOI Training Camp (IOITC): The training camp will take place in Chennai in May 2021. 30 students are shortlisted for this round from INOI.
4. International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI): The last round will be conducted in Singapore and the top 4 students from IOITC will get a chance to take part in the same.