Today our post is about mobile applications of SAMSUNG IT SCHOOL graduates. Let's start with a brief information about the IT SCHOOL (for details, you are welcome to our and/or ask questions in the comments). In the second part, we will talk about the best, in our opinion, Android applications that were created by schoolchildren in grades 6-11!
Briefly about SAMSUNG IT SCHOOL
IT SCHOOL SAMSUNG is a social and educational program for schoolchildren, which operates in 22 cities of Russia. The Russian headquarters of Samsung Electronics initiated the program 5 years ago to support high school students who are passionate about programming. In 2013, specialists from the Samsung Moscow Research Center, together with the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, solved a difficult task - they developed a Java programming course for Android for schoolchildren. Together with local authorities, they chose partners - schools and centers of additional education. And most importantly, we found associates with the necessary qualifications: teachers, professors from universities and professional developers who liked the idea of ββteaching children about native mobile development. By September 2014, Samsung had equipped 38 classrooms, where classes for high school students began.
Signing of a memorandum of cooperation between Samsung and Kazan Federal University with the participation of the President of the Republic of Tatarstan Mr. Minnikhanov, November 2013
Since then (since 2014) we annually accept more than 1000 studentsand they take a one-year course for free.
How is the training going? Classes begin in September and end in May, take place according to the schedule, once or 2 times a week with a total duration of 4 academic hours.
The course consists of modules, after each module there is a difficult test to test the acquired knowledge, and at the end of the year, students need to develop and submit their own project - a mobile application.
Yes, the program turned out to be difficult, which is quite natural, given the amount of knowledge that is required to obtain the result. Especially if our task is to teach programming competently. And this cannot be done by building training on the βdo as I doβ technique, it is necessary to give a basic understanding of the theoretical foundations of the studied sections of programming. Over the past 4 years, the course has evolved significantly. Together with the teachers of the program, we tried to find a compromise on the level of complexity, the balance of theory and practice, forms of control, and many other issues. But it was not easy to do this: more than fifty teachers from all over Russia are involved in the program, and all of them are very caring and enthusiastic people with an individual look at teaching programming!
Below are the current names of the modules of the SAMSUNG IT SCHOOL program, which will tell a lot to programmer-initiated readers about their content:
- Fundamentals of Java Programming
- Introduction to Object Oriented Programming
- Fundamentals of Android Application Programming
- Algorithms and Data Structures in Java
- Fundamentals of mobile application backend development
In addition to classes, from the middle of the school year, the guys begin to discuss the topic of the project and begin to develop their own mobile application, and at the end of the training it is presented by the commission. A common practice is to invite local university professors and professional developers as external members of the attestation commission.
The project "Mobile driver assistant", for which Pavel Kolodkin (Chelyabinsk) received a grant for studying at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 2016
In case of successful completion of the training, program graduates receive certificates from Samsung.
Graduation party at the site in Nizhny Novgorod
We are convinced that our graduates are special: they know how to study independently, they have experience in project activities. I am glad that a number of leading Russian universities supported the guys and our program - they are given for the SAMSUNG IT SCHOOL graduate certificate and the diploma of the winner of the competition "IT SCHOOL chooses the strongest!".
The program has received many awards from the business community, including the prestigious Runet Prize.
Runet Prize 2016 in the nomination "Science and Education"
Alumni projects
The brightest event of the program is the annual federal competition "IT SCHOOL chooses the strongest!". The competition is held among all graduates. Only 15-17 best projects from more than 600 applicants are selected for the final, and their authors, schoolchildren, together with teachers, are invited to Moscow for the last stage of the competition.
What project topics do students choose?
Of course, games! The guys believe that they understand them, and with great enthusiasm they get down to business. In addition to technical problems, they solve problems with design (someone draws himself, someone attracts friends who can draw), then they face the task of adjusting the game balance, lack of time, etc. ... and against all odds, every year we see simply amazing examples of the entertainment genre!
Educational apps are also popular. Which is quite understandable: the guys are still studying, and they want to make this process exciting and interesting, to help friends or younger children in the family.
And a special place is occupied by applications of a social nature. Their greatest asset is the idea. To notice a social problem, understand it and offer a solution is a huge achievement at school age.
We can confidently say that we are proud of the level of development of graduates! And so that you can get acquainted with the projects of the guys "live", we have made a selection of applications that are available on GooglePlay (to go to the application store, click on the link on the project name).
So, further about applications and their young authors.
Entertainment applications
- more than 100 thousand downloads
The author of the project is Egor Alexandrov, he is a graduate of the very first graduation of 2015 from the Moscow site at TemoCentre. He became one of the winners of the final of the first IT SCHOOL competition in the nomination of gaming applications.
Tiny Lands is a military strategy game. The player is invited to develop settlements from a tiny village to a city, extracting resources and fighting. It is noteworthy that Yegor had been hatching the idea of ββthis game for a long time, he came up with many heroes even before studying at SCHOOL, when he was trying to make a game in Pascal. Judge for yourself what happened to a 10th grade student!
Heroes and buildings of "Tiny Lands"
Now Yegor is a student of one of the Moscow universities. He is passionate about robotics, and his new projects combine it in an interesting way with mobile development: or .
Robot chess game
- winner of the Grand Prix of the competition 2015
The author of the project is Grigory Senchenok, he is also a student of the most memorable first graduation at the Moscow TemoCentre. Lecturer - Konorkin Ivan.
Gregory's speech at the final of the contest "IT SCHOOL chooses the strongest!" 2015
Touch Cube is an app for those who like to create objects in XNUMXD space. You can construct any object from small cubes. Moreover, each cube can be set to any RGB color and even made transparent. The resulting models can be saved and shared.
To deal with 3D, Grigory independently mastered the elements of linear algebra, because the school curriculum does not include vector space transformations. At the competition, he enthusiastically talked about his plans to commercialize the application. We see that he now has some experience in this matter: now 2 versions are available in the store - free with ads and paid without ads. The free version has over 5 downloads.
- more than 100 thousand downloads
As the name suggests, DrumHero is a version of the famous Guitar Hero game from our 2016 alumnus Shamil Magomedov. He studied at the Samsung Technical Education Center in Moscow with Vladimir Ilyin.
Shamil at the final of the contest "IT SCHOOL chooses the strongest!", 2016
Shamil is a fan of the rhythm games genre, convinced that it is still relevant and, judging by the popularity of the application, he was not mistaken! In his application, the rhythm player with the music being played must press the appropriate areas on the screen at the right time and for the right duration.
In addition to the gameplay, Shamil added the ability to upload his own music. To do this, he had to figure out the MIDI storage format, which allows you to extract the necessary sequence of commands for the game from the source music file. Given that there are many applications that convert common music formats such as MP3 and AVI to MIDI, the idea was definitely a good one. I am glad that Shamil constantly supports his school project, an update has recently been released.
Social Applications
β Grand Prix 2016
The author of the project is Dmitry Pasechnyuk, a 2016 SAMSUNG IT SCHOOL graduate from the Center for the Development of Gifted Children of the Kaliningrad Region, teacher Artur Baboshkin.
ProBonoPublico is intended for people who are ready to engage in charity, namely: to provide people in a difficult life situation with qualified legal or psychological assistance on a pro bono basis (from Latin βfor the public goodβ), i.e. on a volunteer basis. Public and charitable organizations, crisis centers are offered as organizers of such communication (administrators). The application includes a client mobile part for a volunteer and a web application for an administrator.
Application video:
The noble idea of ββthe project captivated the jury of the competition, and he was unanimously awarded the Grand Prix of the competition. In general, Dmitry is one of the brightest graduates in the history of our program. He won the IT SCHOOLS competition, finishing only the 6th grade of a comprehensive school! And he did not stop there, he is the winner of many competitions and olympiads, including NTI, I am a professional. Last year on the Rusbase portal, he said that now he is interested in data analysis and neural networks.
And in the fall of 2017, Dmitry and his teacher Artur Baboshkin, at the invitation of the president of the Samsung Electronics headquarters for Russia and the CIS, took part in the Olympic torch relay in South Korea.
Dmitry Pasechnyuk is one of the first torchbearers of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics Relay
β Grand Prix 2017
The author of the project is Vladislav Tarasov, Moscow graduate of SAMSUNG IT SCHOOL 2017, teacher Vladimir Ilyin.
Vladislav decided to help solve the problem of urban ecology, and above all, waste disposal. In the Enliven application, ecological points of the city of Moscow are marked on the map: places for processing paper, glass, plastic, educational centers, and so on. Through the application, you can find out the address, opening hours, contacts and other information about the ecopoint and get directions to it. In the form of a game, the user is invited to do the right thing - visit ecopoints for points, thanks to which you can raise your rank, save animals, trees and people.
Screenshots of the Enliven application
The Enliven project received the Grand Prix of the annual IT SCHOOLS competition in the summer of 2017. And already in the fall, Vladislav took part in the Young Innovators competition as part of the Moscow City of Education forum, where he took second place and received a special prize from the Rybakov Fund in the amount of 150 rubles for the development of the application.
Presentation of the Grand Prix of the competition 2017
Educational Applications
β preparation for VPR 4th grade
The author of the project is Egor Demidovich, a student of 2017 from the Novosibirsk site of SAMSUNG IT SCHOOL, teacher Pavel Mul. The MyGIA project is one of the winners of the last project competition.
Egor at the finals of the competition "IT SCHOOL chooses the strongest!", 2017
What is a VPR? This is an all-Russian test paper, which is written at the end of elementary school. And, believe me, for kids this is a serious test. Egor developed the MyGIA app to help prepare students for core subjects: math, Russian, and the world around them. It is noteworthy that tasks are generated automatically, eliminating the possibility of memorizing tasks. On defense, Egor said that he had to draw more than 80 pictures, and in order to be able to issue and verify "certificates", in addition to the application itself, he implemented the server part. The application is constantly updated, math questions from VLOOKUP 2018 have recently been added. It now has over 10 downloads.
Screenshots of the MyGIA application
- virtual reality application
The author of the project is Andrey Andryushchenko, a graduate of IT SCHOOL SAMSUNG 2015 from Khabarovsk, teacher Konstantin Kanaev. This project was not created while studying at our school, it has a different story.
Andrey with his teacher at the competition, 2015
In July 2015, Andrey became the winner of the competition "IT SCHOOL chooses the strongest!" in the "Programming" nomination with the Gravity Particles project. The idea was entirely Andrey's - to get acquainted with the basic physical laws in a playful way, primarily implementing the laws of Coulomb and universal gravitation. The jury really liked the application because of the way the code was written, but the implementation clearly lacked three-dimensionality. As a result, after the competition, the idea was born to support Andrey and offer him to create a version of the game for Gear VR virtual reality glasses. This is how the new Electricity project was born, which was created with the support of the VR/AR guru β Fascinating Reality company. And although Andrey had to master a completely different toolkit (C# and Unity), he did it successfully!
Electricity is a 3D visualization of the process of electric current propagation in three conductors: metal, liquid and gas. The demonstration is accompanied by a voice explanation of the observed physical phenomena. The application was demonstrated at several Russian and foreign exhibitions. At the Moscow Science Festival in 2016, queues lined up at our booth to try out the app.
Electricity at the Science Festival in Moscow, 2016
Where are we going and, of course, how to approach us
Today SAMSUNG IT SCHOOL operates in 22 cities of Russia. And our primary task is to give an opportunity to study programming to even more schoolchildren, to replicate our experience. In September 2018, an author's electronic textbook based on the SAMSUNG IT SCHOOL program will be published. It is intended for those initiative educational institutions that want to launch such a course. Teachers, having adopted our materials, will be able to organize training in native development for Android in their regions.
And in conclusion, information for those who decided to join us: now is the time to do it! The admission process for the 2018-2019 academic year has begun.
Brief instruction:
- The program accepts high school students (mainly 9-10) grades and college students under the age of 17 inclusive).
- Check on our that there is an IT SCHOOLS platform near you: will it be possible to come to classes? Please note that classes are face-to-face.
- Fill in and send .
- Pass the 1st stage of entrance examinations - online test. The test is small and fairly simple. It contains tasks for logic, number systems and programming. The latter are easily given up by guys who are confident in branch and loop operators, are familiar with arrays, and write in Pascal or C programming languages. As a rule, if you score 6 points out of 9 possible, then this is enough for an invitation to stage 2.
- The date of the second stage of entrance examinations will be communicated to you in a letter. You will need to come directly to the site of the IT SCHOOL that you chose when applying. The test can take the form of an oral interview or problem solving, but in any case, it is aimed at testing algorithmization abilities and programming skills.
- Enrollment is on a competitive basis. All applicants receive a letter with the result. Classes start from the second or third week of September.
When we opened an educational program for schoolchildren 4 years ago, we were among the first to reach this audience with such a serious program. Years later, we see that they successfully study at universities, implement interesting projects and find themselves in a profession (be it programming or a related field). We do not set ourselves the task of preparing professional developers in just a year (this is simply impossible!), but we definitely give the guys a ticket to the world of an exciting profession!
Author: Svetlana Yun
Head of Solution Ecosystem Development Group, Business Innovation Lab, Samsung Research Center
Educational project manager Samsung IT-SCHOOL
Source: habr.com