An IT academy for novice programmers will appear in Orsha

An IT academy will be established in Orsha to teach promising children the basics of programming, as reported by Andrei Zagursky, Head of the Department of Education, Sports and Tourism of the Orsha District Executive Committee.

The IT academy will open on the basis of the district center for technical creativity of children and youth on April 22, before the final of the republican programming competition in the Scratch environment, which will be held in Orsha.

"The academy will become a supporting institution for the implementation of the innovative project 'Implementation of a model for organizing extracurricular project activities for students in the I and II stages of general secondary education using the Scratch programming environment' with the support of the Hi-Tech Park. We will start implementing it from the new academic year," explained Andrei Zagursky.

The project will last for two years, and 8 more schools in the city will serve as its base. "Through extracurricular activities in schools, we will attract children from grades 2-6 to learn the basics, so that they can later move on to more complex programming languages. The Hi-Tech Park is also interested in this – this is how they will train personnel for themselves," noted Andrei Zagursky. Children from other Orsha schools will be able to study at the IT academy: learn programming in the Scratch environment, computer graphics, and engage in project and educational research activities in the field of information and communication technologies. The academy will also train teachers to conduct extracurricular classes. In the future, an IT literacy club for the elderly will be organized here, and there are even plans to engage in robotics.

According to Andrey Zagursky, work on the implementation of information technologies in education in the district has been carried out for a long time. Thanks to the sponsorship of resident companies of the High-Tech Park, a resource center for information technologies has been operating at the Department of Education, Sports and Tourism since December 2009. Teachers can improve their competence as PC users - to date, 55% of school administrations and 52% of all teachers in the district have a certificate of a qualified information technology user. The center also organizes work with gifted students: distance contests and olympiads, online conferences and seminars are held. Annually, about 1.5 thousand students of the 9th and 11th grades of the Orsha district undergo career guidance testing here, the results of which help them choose a profession.

"Today, the resource center directs and coordinates the activities of the department and subordinate educational institutions in creating a unified information educational environment. In addition, resource centers have been created at six schools for various aspects of ICT implementation in the educational process and management activities. Furthermore, the multiservice information educational environment under the "Virtual School" project, which has been operating since September 1, 2014, at Gymnasium No. 1 in Orsha, makes a significant contribution to working with gifted children and preparing them for olympiads. This academic year, 5 educational institutions in the district are completing the implementation of the Ministry of Education's innovative project "Implementation of a learning model using individual electronic devices in general secondary education institutions" (1 student: 1 computer)," the interlocutor concluded.

Ekaterina Knyazeva - BELTA.