We distribute 500K to the organization of circles of robotics

UPD: Competition is over

Almost two years ago, we began to actively promote robotics in Yekaterinburg. Soon after the start of our activity, it came to be understood that the surest way to attract people to this area is to work with schoolchildren. What we, in fact, successfully and engaged. Pretty quickly there was a desire to scale our experience. We managed to share this desire with two Ekaterinburg IT companies - Naumen and Extreme , the result - see the post title.
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Under the cut more about how we came to such a life. Immediately I want to disappoint most of those present: we will allocate money only to residents of the Sverdlovsk region, detailed conditions here .

How it all began

It all started with the fact that two programmers spontaneously began to look for like-minded people for their hobby hobbies. It turned out that among colleagues (mostly hardened IT-people) it is quite difficult to do this - people are already adults with formed interests. Despite the lack of supporters, we somehow managed to make up the backbone, and this was enough to create MakeItLab - the basis for all further activities. At the technical faculties of Ural Federal University, the search was simpler - after all, this is the “Mecca” of techies, but still our search did not bring much success - in Yekaterinburg, talented students were tearing apart IT companies from the first courses. Yes, and it should be understood that the situation with the technical circles led to the mass unprincipledness of students.

We decided to go even lower. Then the Ural Computer School (UKSH) came in very handy - courses for gifted high school students at the Physical and Technical University of Ural Federal University. We even developed a couple of courses on creating a mobile robot especially for them.



This approach gave an excellent result! Our first students entered the university, and now they are actively involved in the life of the hackspace, make robots and other cunning artifacts, pass on the experience to other students. More about UKSH we will tell in one of the following posts.

In general, the experience of UKSH showed that we chose the right path. The next step is to transfer our experience to regular schools.



Programming for ordinary students is not interesting - it is a fact. Yes, in each class there are 1-2 people who can at least encode something. But in general, understanding of why you need to be able to program is not. Partly, such a picture was formed because it is difficult to enthrall young people with technology, with their current toys and gadgets, some interactivity on the screen is not very impressive (you and I, dinosaurs, fell into ecstasy from drawing circles in a ZXSpectrum loop).



Robotics is another matter, in it the lines on the screen are transformed into mechanical action - this is new, it delays. Actually, it is so new and delays that even in not very capable classes, the guys sit for two hours without stopping. Due to this, the teacher is not required special pedagogical abilities, his role is to walk between students and help in difficulties. Normal relations are established between the children and the teacher, almost like that of their colleagues. Before you go to school, we must admit, we were a little afraid of the children. However, after the very first classes, it became clear that, in general, there is nothing to be afraid of, you just need to give the children good motivation, and they themselves will help you. And this is a great property of robotics - in order for it to teach, you do not need to be able to work with children, you only need to understand it yourself. From this a logical sentence was born: let's invite the people to teach schoolchildren.



Among other things, the idea allows us to solve one more urgent problem of the Russian education - personnel. Yes, there are excellent teachers, laureates of various competitions, activists, etc. But for the most part, school teachers have such a burden that they simply don’t have time to study new technologies and creative approaches. Therefore, without a massive influx of fresh, capable people, something good will never work out. This is what we are trying to do.

What you need for classes in robotics

Only three things:

1. Computer class
2. Pieces (robot designers)
3. Enthusiast (he is a teacher)

The easiest way is with computer classes - all schools are now equipped with them without fail. Somewhat more complicated with glands. As far as we know, no one has yet managed to equip a classroom in less than 50K. This requires qualification and a lot of time. Well, teachers are like us. This is certainly an interesting lesson, but it also takes a lot of time. Often you have to sacrifice your professional activities for the sake of teaching.
Thus, in order for further actions to have a more serious purposeful effect, we have attended to the search for money.

Why IT Companies

The main problem of IT is personnel. In general, IT seems to me a sort of huge fire chamber, in which no matter how many frames you drop, everything will burn, and IT development is mainly determined by the amount of fuel. Moreover, if they still care about students, then everything is somehow very sad with schoolchildren, and it’s much more efficient to work with them. It is believed that aunts who are engaged in schoolchildren, have a greater impact on IT than company executives.

We do not expect that we will be able to significantly affect the personnel market for the 500K mentioned. In any case, one cannot do without large government injections; this project should most likely be considered as a pilot. By the way, if someone else thinks to throw money in - we will help in every possible way.

What is required of you

- a wish.

Next, you will need to study one of the popular platforms (Arduino, Raspberry PI, in the extreme case, Lego), its development environment, see what school courses there are (you can even see Amperka courses for a start ), you can even come up with your own course. To facilitate the task a little later, we will prepare an overview of different courses and platforms.

Next, the most difficult thing: to go to your home school or another close to you child care facility and arrange for classes. In principle, you can conduct classes in your own office, however, we would like you to take some of those who are professionally involved in children as direct allies, we will give preference to such applicants.

In parallel, we are now compiling a list of establishments wishing to organize robotics circles. Therefore, if you have difficulty finding such an organization, we may be able to tell you (but it’s better not to count on it).

We will allocate up to 120K for the purchase of glands to children's institutions, but we hope for smaller appetites.

Once you understand the organization, you will need to make a detailed lesson plan, here we will help you in every way.

What are you getting

- joy and karma.

In addition, some money: the average salary of a teacher in Yekaterinburg is about 200 rubles. per hour, we will add 270 p. For such a fee, you will have to teach at least 5 hours a week.

Immediately tell about the trick - to officially find a job and get mentioned 200 p. will need to run for inquiries (work with children after all).

The competition was divided into two stages. At first, you actually just need to declare your presence, we will select those with whom we are ready to work. At the second stage, it will be necessary to take more substantial actions - to negotiate with the school, draw up a plan.

More formally, the conditions of the competition are described here .