Summer Engineer Program AMC.Code
In August 2019, the American Center in Moscow held a regular session of the engineering camp for schoolchildren and students ages 14-21. The camp program consisted of three areas – coding, IT project management, and design. Participants worked on developing an application for the American Center with the help of S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics).
Experts from various leading companies in the IT and science industry gave lectures and conducted master classes for AMC.Code participants. The topics covered in these lectures included corporate social responsibility programs, correct approaches to creating digital products, and how IT developments are changing civil society. Professional instructors from Yandex, Samsung, Teplitsa of Social Initiatives, and GeekBrains came to share their ideas and knowledge with the finalists.
During the program, participants gained skills in various areas, including developing a technological project and managing IT projects, as well as worked on various aspects of creating an application for the American Center in Moscow. The outcome of the program was the development of prototypes of an application for AMC, which were then presented at the Codeathon, a two-day competition following the program, to the experts from Yandex, Skyeng, FabLab, Samsung School and Goethe Institute. The jury praised the participants’ work and were impressed by the results the participants achieved.
Technology for Social Good
Journalist and editor of the educational platform of Greenhouse of Social Technologies, Ekaterina Ulyanova, gave a lecture on how information technologies might lead to changes in civil societies. She spoke about why it is important to participate in hackathons and to become a volunteer for IT projects. Ekaterina also presented on several social issues that are being solved in Russia with the help of IT.
Emerging Technologies and the Internet of Things
Tatiana Volkova, Leading Specialist at Corporate Social Responsibility at Samsung R&D Institute, spoke about the ‘Internet of Things’, and explained why this phrase has been so widely used in the last 10 years. She also introduced the Samsung IT Academy – an educational program for young developers – and
motivated the audience to learn more about programming.
Design Thinking for Product Creation
Nikita Gusev, a product designer at Yandex and a tutor at GeekBrains, talked about the correct approach to creating products and revealed answers to the most important questions facing creators of digital and physical products. The audience learned how to develop a new product idea and how to understand if people will need this product.
Fifty-four students became finalists in the AMC.Code camp after a very difficult and competitive selection. The finalists of the program worked on various tasks in the field of project management and searched for solutions to various social problems. A wide array of engineering and technical causes of various accidents were discussed and analyzed, such as aircraft crashes. The finalists studied various programming techniques, learned how to develop their own projects and prescribe documentation for them, disassembled already established social projects, held a SWOT analysis of their competitive projects, and selected the shareholders and team members. At the end, teams brought together all the material they had learned in the program and presented their final projects to the jury.
AMC.Code camp received positive reviews from the participants, the guest speakers, and the jury. AMC.Code is focused on the development of project design skills and considers that their result was the study of these skills.
The team AMCapp won the Codeathon with a prototype of well-designed application with features corresponding to all aspects of the American Center’s work. The winning team suggested development strategies for this application and made it safe for use. This prototype is going to be used in designing an official AMC application.
