The "Taipei Whiz Kid, I Am the English All-Star" event, hosted for many years by the Taipei City Department of Education, is a major annual event for English learning competitions. Participating students present multimedia content on computers and engage in group Q&A competitions using the Interactive Response System (IRS). This is a very meaningful activity that both enhances children's English skills and cultivates a sense of teamwork and honor.

HABOOK Group is honored to participate in and sponsor this highly meaningful event every year, making a positive contribution to education through information technology. Below, we'd like to share the highlights of the event and hope to expand this type of inter-school, inter-class, team-based, synchronous, and integrated physical-virtual learning competition to other cities and counties.

✨Group-Based Competition Integrating Information Technology and English Learning

■ Event-driven Learning

This is a method of driving learning through competition. The organizers provide rewards to participants, divided into three categories: school, class, and individual. The number of students who participate in online learning also affects the school's team score, motivating all students to actively participate and achieving a group learning effect.
 

■ E-learning

The event consists of two stages: a competency training arena and a competency competition arena. The main purpose of the competency training arena is for students to engage in self-learning online. The official website for the event provides online English learning materials, which contestants can study in advance. Some of the competition questions are taken from the online materials, cultivating students' ability for self-directed learning.
 

■ Class-based Contest  

Currently, most English academic competitions are for elites, with only those who are best in listening, speaking, reading, and writing participating. The Taipei Whiz Kid competition, however, is a class-based contest where all members of a class are participants. This encourages students within a class to cooperate and help each other to collectively improve their English skills and achieve the best performance. This concept is made possible by using the Interactive Response System (IRS) as a tool.
   

■ Cross-classroom Competition

During the competency competition arena stage, representative classes nominated by each school participate in the competition. They first compete in preliminary rounds based on their school's location, followed by city-wide finals and individual challenges. After the competition, rewards are given based on rankings. In the preliminary rounds, students can simply stay in their original classrooms to download the competition questions and start competing, engaging in a synchronous competition across different classes and locations. Once they finish, their answers are uploaded instantly, and the system automatically ranks and selects the classes and individuals who will proceed to the finals, demonstrating the efficiency of user-side and cloud-side integration.

✨Intense Atmosphere in the Individual Elimination Round

The most intense part of the event is the individual final round. Four students from each class participate, answering questions on topics including vocabulary, sentence patterns, and grammar. During the competition, participants focus intently on the screen and use their remote control to answer. An incorrect answer leads to elimination. The last ten students remaining receive an award. As the elimination round progresses, not only are the contestants on stage very nervous, but the children in the audience also cheer loudly for their classmates, making the atmosphere very lively.
 
We hope to see the application of this in more creative competition activities like the Taipei Whiz Kid, to make learning more diverse and efficient.