Together with @Shadi Ashnai and a superb team of Wolfram professionals, I was very fortunate to be part of the Wolfram Summer School Armenia that ran August 7 - 20 and have just ended. We had many applications and after a thorough selection process and interviews we ended up with 21 students. High percentage of females is a good indicator of educational quality, as the IT-sector is skewed towards males. We also had good diversity of ages ranging from high-schoolers to university students to professionals. We admitted one Iranian student and one Russian student who had also applied and had outstanding backgrounds. And this marks this school as first international Wolfram school to be held in Armenia! Here is simple demographics of student body:
The idea behind a regional Wolfram school is to bring the Wolfram Summer School experience to other countries eliminating the hassle of student traveling and accommodating those who cannot travel at all. This builds awareness of Wolfram Technologies in foreign regions, helps business relationships, and stimulates local communities towards education and professional development. Armenia is a beautiful country with tremendous heritage, which is currently strives to rebuild the economy. And as the future lies in a younger generation we are glad to help by bringing free Wolfram education to this region. The gender gap in IT is high, quoting "Girls Who Code" initiative:
Tech jobs are among the fastest growing ... , yet girls are being left behind. While interest in computer science ebbs over time, the biggest drop off happens between the ages of 13-17. The gender gap in computing has actually been getting worse since the 1980s.
And I am proud that we are helping to close this gap and generally to educate younger generation of Armenia. In my personal experience gender-balanced environments are socially healthier and foster better learning. We are very grateful to the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies for collaboration and providing the best space for innovative schools in the capital Yerevan. Here is a the school group photo followed by a photo of all our female students. More photos at the end, keep reading!
The program run just 2 weeks but in that short time span students accomplished a lot. During 9 AM to 9 PM schedule the students had the following main activities:
In a 9 AM - 9 PM schedule you must have some recreation time to reboot your mind. We did some games, sports and walks in the park. And when the school was over nobody wanted to leave, so they bid their farewell in a traditional Armenian sense - with a dance! See this video but come back to read further:
To make learning and socialization more efficient we created a SLACK team for our students with many channels ranging from programming and machine learning to recreation and administration. This really helped us to bring students and faculty members together. As SLACK was active before school started we were able to do some pre-school programming practicing with the students. We exchanged a lot of ideas during the school and all our students were constantly engaged in communications with each other and staff:
All Time Messages From People & Integrations
People Reading & Writing
Each student had an individual project to complete and a faculty member to supervise. Every project was finalized as a publication on Wolfram Community and you can find all of them in the Wolfram Summer School group with title tag [WSSA16]. Just to get a sense how divers and advanced the project were I will mention a few below. We were really impressed what young people have achieved in such a short period of time.
Here are a few sticking images from the projects.
Facial Emotions Recognition:
Real Armenian Geo-Region: Simulation of the Elastic Waves
And at last but not at least I offer you a short photo album. Please also take a look at our school Facebook page (you need to be signed in into Facebook for that).
