April was rich in both Internet-related holidays and activities, such as RIGF 2018, the .RU domain birthday and the Russian Internet Forum, and Internet-related events held for children and young people as well. The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ has recently announced the results of several contests, awarded the winners of its two IT marathons – one for children, one for their teachers – and held digital literacy lessons in one of Moscow’s schools.
On April 16, winners in the XVII All-Russian school publications contest, “To More Good Publications of Various Kinds”, were presented with their awards in an official ceremony in Skolkovo’s press park. The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, as one of the partners of the contest, awarded the winners in the special Online Reporter category. Golden diplomas were presented to the editorial board of the newspaper Aktsenty (Moscow, school No. 1358) for its contribution to children’s journalism, and to Children’s Studio TeleIdeya (Moscow, School No. 1329) for its professionalism in covering operational material. Apart from useful gadgets and honorary diplomas, editorial board members were granted the status of young correspondents and given the opportunity to participate in DOT-Journalism 2018, a contest for aspiring Internet correspondents, organized by the Coordination Center together with the Smart Internet foundation and the Russian Association for Electronic Communications.
On April 17, the Coordination Center and the School of New Technologies announced the results of the express contest, DOT-Journalism.Young Correspondents, for aspiring Internet journalists in the Vkontakte and Facebook social networks. Participants were to write a short article on one of the Internet-related holidays celebrated in the field of IT in April, such as Internet Day, Webmasters’ Day or Runet’s Birthday.
The experts selected the three best articles and all authors that made it to the final stage of the express contest were also presented with certificates and prizes. In addition, they were granted the status of young correspondents and nominated for the aspiring Internet journalists’ award, DOT-Journalism.
On April 21, an IT marathon ended in Moscow. This marathon was a series of tournaments held by the Moscow Department of Information Technologies and hosted by various educational institutions in order to enhance school students’ knowledge about information technology and the safe use of the Internet. In the final stage of this marathon, teams had to solve problems developed by the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI, CISCO company and the Coordination Center during the “Explore Internet – Govern It” online tournament dedicated to the Internet of Things. All four teams of Moscow school students who made it to the finals were awarded with certificates and useful gadgets. The Coordination Center also invited them to take a tour of the National Research Centre Kurchatov Institute, which once hosted the first Internet session in Russia, and launched the first Russian top level domains, .SU and .RU.
On April 23-24, Moscow hosted the final stage of the 6th Real Project School contest, where schoolchildren and students undertake projects and applied research based on real tasks suggested by employers. In order to make it to the final stage, children had to solve one of 87 cases from real employer-companies in the course of one school year. The cases involved programming, robotics, electronics, mobile app development, engineering, informational communications, mechatronics, 3D modeling, the Internet of Things, design, PR, education marketing, gamification, and others.
The Coordination Center also acted as an employer and invited contestants to modernize the “Explore the Internet – Govern It” project. Winners and finalists in this contest were awarded with useful gadgets and diplomas from the Center, plus Smart Internet Foundation certificates for the free registration of .ДЕТИ domain names. All games, mobile app content and quizzes created by school students during the course of this contest are now under development so that in the next school year they will be available on the Explore Internet – Govern It website, with obligatory indication of authorship. On April 25, the final stage of the UchITel marathon was held. The participants were Moscow teachers who had been the most progressive in terms of implementing modern IT technologies in their work. The Coordination Center provided expert support to the project and awarded its ten finalists with valuable devices.
From April 13 to April 26, the Moscow School of Young Politicians No. 1306 hosted digital literacy lessons for grade 8-9 students. Head of projects at the Smart Internet Foundation (the administrator of .ДЕТИ domain names) Viktoria Bunchuk held two presentations for the children. The first of these concerned the issues of confidentiality in IT and the main rules of security in the digital era, while the second focused on the definition, areas of development and examples of the effective use of e-government. During the second presentation, children learned about the concept of “smart city” in detail, using the example of Moscow.
