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Will the Hour of Code help attract students to IT? Complete hour code level 3.

hour of code

In Russia, from December 4 to 13, the second annual campaign to promote IT education in secondary schools - "Hour of Code 2015", was held under the auspices of two ministries - the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Education and Science with the support of a number of leading IT companies (Kaspersky Lab, 1C ”, Microsoft, Acronis, Zeptolab”). The action is held in the form of a computer lesson, during which students get acquainted with the basics of programming and create their first programs interactively using special "children's" developer tools. One of these lessons was open format at Moscow school No. 1253 for 8th grade students with the participation of the head of the Ministry of Communications Nikolai Nikiforov in the presence of representatives of sponsoring companies.

For last year's "Hour of Code" the site www.coderussia.ru was created, which hosts methodological materials for the lesson, including a set of consecutive tasks of nine levels of difficulty. According to the organizers, in December 2014 specialized computer science lessons were held in more than 35,000 Russian schools (over 80% of their total number), more than 7.1 million students took part in them.

The main goal of the Hour of Code is to draw the attention of the younger generation to IT, keeping in mind the strategic goal of increasing the influx of personnel into the IT industry, primarily into the field of software development. “In our country, about a million people are employed in IT, of which about 350,000 specialists write code directly. The demand for IT specialists is very high - companies are constantly in need of new personnel and are literally fighting for the best university graduates, offering them ever-higher salaries, more and more interesting and ambitious projects,” these are the words that Nikolai Nikiforov said at the open lesson as part of last year's action, they sounded now.

Within the hour lesson, two main ideas are promoted: to demonstrate the attractiveness of the profession of an IT specialist / programmer (interesting, promising, financially attractive) and to show that programming is not only interesting, but also quite accessible to everyone. First, a video with speeches by famous Russian IT personalities is shown, and then a lesson is given on programming the simplest gaming applications.

It should be noted that the topic of transferring the center of gravity of the topic of attracting young personnel in the IT industry to the school level was designated by the Russian IT business two or three years ago. IT is one of the most dynamically developing areas of the world economy, IT companies have long topped the rankings in terms of fame and financial performance, but IT professions in Russia are far from the first in the lists of the most attractive professions in our country. In terms of the number of programmers, our country is far from being a leader: according to the data announced by the head of the Ministry of Communications, 4 million software developers work in the United States, 3 million in India, and approximately 2 million people in China

In Russia, the volume of training of IT specialists is expanding (as the head of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications said, the number of budget places for IT professions in Russian universities increased from 27 thousand in 2012 to 42.5 thousand in 2015), but in secondary school there is a decrease in interest in IT in plan for the future career guidance of schoolchildren. If twenty years ago the subject "Informatics" came to school to teach programming in the first place, now it is focused largely on training an IT user, and not an IT developer. Moreover, the prestige of the subject itself in school curriculum falling rather than rising.

This, in particular, is evidenced by the example of Moscow School No. 444, which, having had the status of “Physics and Mathematics” for several decades, was one of the first in our country (since the late 1960s) to start teaching programming to high school students (in 1965 Mikhail Brin, the father of one of the founders of Google, graduated from it in 1998). The school is still known for its quality of education, but in recent years, the IT-direction, which was a profile ten years ago, has turned into just one of their usual subjects. As a result of the school reform, all senior classes have become subject-oriented, now there are classes in economics, medicine, and technology, but there are no specialized ones in IT.

Elena Davydova, a computer science teacher at this school, believes that this situation is very typical for the secondary education system. As a reason, she calls the fact that the current system of motivation for both schools and students does not at all contribute to the growth of the prestige of IT subjects, rather, on the contrary.

Now one of the main formal indicators of the quality of school work is the number of winners in Olympiads. But for a number of reasons, it is much easier to get the required number of "excellent students" in the same economics than in computer science (it is much easier to organize Olympiads in economics, there are much more of them, the requirements are lower there). Therefore, schools, optimizing their work, naturally choose areas where it is easier for them to get higher reporting rates. “At present, when there is a race for the winners of the Olympiads, and not for the quality of education, there can be no talk of any specialists (IT specialists are, first of all, creative individuals). Olympians can be compared to sprinters,” says Elena Davydova.

There is no particular interest in studying computer science on the part of high school students. Now the school is aimed at preparing people who then almost 100% intend to enter universities, respectively, the main priority for schoolchildren is the USE scores, moreover, for subjects that are mandatory for admission to a university. “There is an order of the Minister of Education on exams, but it does not work yet. It states that in order to enter a university, it is necessary to pass four exams (within the framework of the Unified State Examination), one of which is computer science in almost all specialties. But in practice, only three exams are still required: two mandatory ones - mathematics, Russian, for technical specialties - physics, various humanities - social science, and only for a small number of specialties - computer science. If the ministry simply took care of the implementation of its own order, then the interest of both schools and students in the subject would increase dramatically.”

As for the Hour of Code, the action itself is useful. But only one hour a year to promote the prospects of the IT profession is clearly not enough, this year School No. 444 decided not to participate in the action. At a speech at an open lesson on December 10, Nikolai Nikiforov announced plans to overcome the bar of 7.5 million participants this year, but now, after official completion shares, the counter of participants shows only 1.182 million.

The first time such a lesson was held two years ago, and more than seven million students took part in it, the next year the number of participants, according to the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, increased to 8.3 million.
From the fifth to the tenth of December this year, each school will hold a special informatics lesson, where children will learn the basic things in programming. In Hour of Code 2016, students will be able to clearly see that programming is the universal language for communication and the future of all communications. This is also said by the most famous video bloggers of the country, who share their own impressions of the first lesson in this area. The largest companies operating in the IT industry have cooperated thanks to this social initiative, as they are clearly aware of how serious the issue is to increase the technological literacy of students. It is also important to talk about simplicity and accessibility. modern way and programming tools.

Hour of Code 2016 level solution

Among other things, during the Hour of Code 2016 event itself, even teachers can learn something new for themselves. On the project website, you can download advanced teaching materials that will help teachers prepare for a truly interesting class. For this, modern interactive and gaming technologies have been developed. The organizers believe that it is the support of teachers that will make this action extremely useful. The difference of today's promotion is that game tasks are divided into several levels with different complexity. Here everything will depend on age: junior school from the first to the fourth grade, for those who study from the fifth to the seventh, as well as for teenagers.

The authors of the initiative believe that the Hour of Code action will make Information Technology not just an interesting hobby, but also an excellent tool for career development, which will largely determine the future of IT in Russia. The Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, as well as the Ministry of Communications, are fully assisting in carrying out the action. Leading representatives in the area under consideration are also involved: Microsoft, Kaspersky Lab and many others.
Do not forget that there is nothing supernatural in programming. It's easier than many people think. One has only to start and then you can become part of a brighter future.