At the end of November, a training dedicated to creating Brainfinity tasks took place in Porto, Portugal.

The workshop was led by professor Ivan Anić, the creator of the Brainfinity competition, who shared the secrets of designing tasks for this popular problem-solving competition with consortium representatives from the Erasmus+ project Brainfinity Detectives.

Brainfinity is a competition that promotes creativity, collaboration and logical reasoning among students. This competition offers challenges that motivate students to give their best and develop their abilities. Unlike many mathematical competitions, which often induce stress and fear of failure in children, Brainfinity focuses on practical skills and solving real-life problems, answering the question that children often ask: “How will this help me in real life?”

The main idea of the project is the internationalisation of the Brainfinity competition to enable teachers from different countries to use this attractive method to develop problem-solving skills in students. To achieve this mission, it was necessary to train two to three teachers from partner countries (Portugal, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Serbia) to create detective tasks and then share the acquired knowledge with colleagues in their respective countries.

The training was interesting and challenging for all participants. Multinational teams had to connect and develop a plan to solve challenging tasks. The tasks were created to stimulate thinking and the creation of a complete picture of the problem. Each team demonstrated creativity and originality in its own way.

During the training, we conducted brainstorming sessions and dedicated hours to thinking about solutions. All teams were highly motivated – none faltered. During lunch breaks, we discussed everything and enjoyed traditional Porto dishes.

After successfully mastering the first part of the training, which focuses on solving Brainfinity tasks, we moved on to creating our own Brainfinity problems – first those called Brainfinity puzzles, and then real Brainfinity problems.

Participants stood out with creative ideas: some were experts in encryption, while others brilliantly created a logical story. Our mentor Ivan happily observed the formation of a serious team he could rely on when designing new Brainfinity problems.

A week in Porto passed quickly. At the end of the training, all participants received well-deserved certificates. An additional reward was a sunny Saturday, which we used to visit the city’s landmarks and enjoy the beautiful view of the ocean. We returned to Serbia with a rich experience that we can’t wait to share with our colleagues.