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Competitions are a specific way how to work with gifted youth at primary, secondary schools and universities. In addition to standard school education, they represent another way of young people's development of their knowledge, skills and abilities and contribute to finding a way for their future profession. So a teacher at each level of education is expected to know not only the potential of their students, but also the specifics of individual competitions they will participate in. Nowadays in Slovakia, competitions for primary and secondary schools are provided by two organizations of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic. For elementary schools and secondary grammar schools, the subject olympiads and other competitions are provided by IUVENTA (i.e. the Slovak Institute of Youth), and for secondary vocational schools a competition named Secondary School Vocational Activity is provided by the State Institute of Vocational Education. At Slovak universities, a competition named the Student Scientific Professional and Arts Research and Activity is provided by universities themselves. The aim of the paper is to improve competencies of teachers so that they can develop gift of their students through competitions, too. Examples of these activities are reflected through the Geography Olympiad, the Human Rights Olympiad and the Secondary School Vocational Activity. Several methods are used in processing the data given in the article, i. e. text analysis, analysis of the results gathered from the stated competitions, methods of deduction and description, statistical processing of the data and cartographic visualization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student competitions are widespread across all academic disciplines, and are often touted as a means to motivate and educate students. Competitions may be internal within a single class or course, or vie school against school as regional, national, or international competitions and exist at all levels including 9–12 grades. These competitions have different formats and focuses such as vulnerability assessments, forensic challenges, offensive, and defensive competitions (or a combination of these). Some competitions require simple scripts and are considered ideal for script kitties while others require in-depth understanding of computer security and networking techniques to successfully compete in the competition. While the number of competitions and students participating in them have increased, it is unclear whether the stated academic goals of the competition are being met. In some cases, it appears that the focus of the student and institutional effort is more on the competition itself than on learning underlying concepts and developing skills. At our institution, students participate in several cyber-competitions, some of which we have initiated. The purpose of this paper is to survey existing cybercompetitions to understand the purpose of the competition, review underlying stated educational goals, and explore how the competition meets these goals. We compare the role of cyber competitions with the role of other computer-related competitions such as robotics, programming, unmanned aerial vehicles, and artificial intelligence comparing and contrasting the educational impact of the competitions on the participants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Different methodological guidelines, lack of clarity in designing curriculum modules, as well as the diversity of definitions and conceptions presents in the competence approach are drawbacks for designers of competency-based curricula. This paper presents a system designed under an ontological approach, which aims to support the design of competency-based curricula. The system emphasizes aspects such as graduate profiles and curriculum modules. The ontology is a framework to formally describe the domain knowledge of curriculum design, ensuring a consistent and unambiguous vocabulary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]