The academic year is coming to an end, and the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ traditionally reviews its contests and presents educational and social events held in the spring of 2019. Many events for school and university students, their parents and teachers were dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the .RU ccTLD, widely celebrated on Runet this year.
For example, the third annual contest for beginning internet journalists, DOT Journalism: Young Correspondents, which was launched this spring, was timed to coincide with the anniversary.
The competition aims to increase the level digital skills among new users as well as the professional level of the materials on internet technology. Students under 18 are invited to participate. Competition entries can be submitted until October 1, 2019. The results will be announced in November during Russian Internet Week 2019 (RIW 2019).
The participants of School Press Days, held on April 5-13 in Moscow, will also join the nominees of the contest. On April 13, they received their Homework for Summer designed by the Coordination Center this year, which dedicated the task to the domain’s anniversary.
Young journalists will prepare infographics on records or interesting facts from Runet’s history or the .RU domain’s timeline and publish what they’ve done on the NASHpres website or on social networks using the hashtag #25ЛЕТRU_ИНФОГРАФИКА or #25ЛЕТRU_ТАЙМЛАЙН. They can post the infographics until October 1, 2019. The ten best submissions will make it to the finals of the DOT Journalism: Young Correspondents contest in the 25RUЛET category. The first three will be invited to RIW 2019, and the winner will get a certificate and valuable prizes.
The awards ceremony for the 18th More Varying and Better Press Russian school magazine contest was among the main events of School Press Days. In 2018-2019, about 400 teenage media designers from all across Russia submitted projects for the contest. After the preliminary round, there were 227 teams from 55 regions and 118 cities. As per tradition, the contest was held in two formats: a tournament for print media and a school media marathon (a remote competition among school press centers, editorial teams, and photo and video studios in media). The winners received prizes and gifts from the Coordination Center.
On April 10, libraries in Moscow, St. Petersburg and ten other Russian cities hosted the First Interregional Cybereducation Dictation for School Students. The event was also timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of .RU. It was attended by 400 young people aged 11-15. Unlike the regular procedure, the participants wrote their answers on the screens of their mobile devices online instead of on paper. The results were announced as soon as the dictation was over. After that, the organizers analyzed the errors with young people and held workshops on the safe use of the internet. According to the test results in 12 cities, the average number of correct answers was 14 of 20. All the participants received certificates, and the libraries that hosted the event received gratitude from the organizers.
On April 8-10, school No. 285 in Moscow hosted The School of the Young Engineer, where 9th graders learned about the opportunities provided by studying engineering. Online tournaments on Cybersecurity and the Technology of the Future were organized for the participants.
This spring the Learn the Internet, Manage It! project was a main newsmaker among the social projects for students. For example, on April 17 the Coordination Center’s Social Project Manager Viktoria Bunchuk was invited to Mediametrics online radio and, as a guest of the Children’s Issue program, talked about how Runet began, the digital skills of today’s users including gen Z.
The Learn the Internet, Manage It! project announced the theme of the upcoming online championship among student teams, which will be held in November.
On April 19, the final stage of the Real Business School contest of applied research among school and university students was held in Moscow. This is the seventh time that this contest was held; 1,045 submissions (from about 4,000 people) were received. Approximately 420 submissions made it to the finals. The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ once again offered the teams a chance to develop a scenario for a game module dedicated to the internet, which will be introduced at the Learn the Internet, Manage It! educational website.
On April 20, the final part of the 2018-2019 Moscow IT Marathon took place, with four school teams consisting of students from the 8th to the 10th grades making it to the finals. The participants had to set up a local network using Cisco Packet Tracer and then compete in how well they understood new and future technologies in the Learn the Internet, Manage It! online tournament. The winners were awarded certificates and devices from the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ.
On April 25-26, the Vladimir Region’s department of education and the Novikova Vladimir Institute for the Development of Education held the Digital Educational Environment Interregional Scientific and Practical Conference where new education technology as well as infrastructure and intellectual solutions to create an advanced education ecosystem in the region were presented. The conference included workshops by leading experts on innovative teaching technology. The Coordination Center’s Social Project Manager Viktoria Bunchuk presented the Learn the Internet, Manage It! project and its opportunities to teachers. She also talked about the educational literature published by the center, in particular, “Practical Safety Psychology: Managing Personal Data” on the internet and the book Internet Governance by Jovan Kurbalija.
And finally, on May 22 the results of the 2019 Russian Family IT Marathon held in April were summed up, with 180 family teams, or 800 participants in total, taking part. The marathon included four tournaments, with the first one, which was dedicated to general questions on the internet, being the most popular: 68 teams participated. Most of the families represented Moscow, the Moscow, Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, Lipetsk and Amur regions and the Republic of Buryatia. The ITstarFamily team from Novokuibyshevsk was the overall winner. There also were winners in each tournament.
“The Coordination Center’s social projects not only care about youth education and improving digital skills but also about helping to create a safe and comfortable internet environment. This year we dedicated many of our projects to the 25th anniversary of the .RU domain, which helped students get to know .RU and .РФ as well as the entire domain industry. More people take part in our projects each year; they come up with new ideas and proposals, and we present our activities to a larger audience. We will continue this work, and more interesting events are coming this fall,” said the Coordination Center’s Director Andrey Vorobyev.
