On November 27, the 13th annual School of Real Projects competition for school and university students kicked off. As is tradition, the new season opened with a case fair hosted by the Higher School of Economics (HSE). The event brought together some 800 school and university students from Moscow and the Moscow Region, as well as representatives from 30 partner companies, including the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ which participated through its Study the Internet & Govern It interactive educational project.
The total number of participants in the 13th season of the School of Real Projects will be confirmed after the registration period closes on December 8. Currently, about 2,000 students from 23 regions of Russia have expressed interest in joining the project.
At the case fair, companies presented 70 case proposals, with most of them focused on solving engineering and technical problems or developing projects in the fields of digital and media technologies. Additionally, several cases in the soft sciences were also featured, covering areas such as ecology, social aid, design, music, psychology, and more.
The Coordination Center once again acted as an employer, presenting two cases for participants. The first case challenged students to create a scenario for an educational module that would incorporate game mechanics for the Study the Internet & Govern It project, while the second one involved developing a comic book based on the theoretical materials and practical tasks from the Knowledge online simulator.
"Regular participants in the School of Real Projects are already familiar with the task of preparing a scenario – together, we have already created several educational modules for the Knowledge online simulator," said Olga Yakovleva, Head of the Project Department at the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ. "Yet, students have shown more interest in the second case – the comic book. This is understandable, as the task is new, complex and highly creative: participants will need to write a script and develop meaningful dialogues, create protagonists with distinct characters and motivations, weave facts about digital technologies and the internet into a fictional narrative, and finally, create illustrations for a spread. We are eager to see the results – especially now, as we are in the process of preparing a new comic book about Andrey and his robot-assistant RUBI, our project’s mascot, who together learn the rules of safe online behavior. It’s possible that, due to the students’ efforts, we will create a series of such comics to make learning about digital safety more engaging."
One of the Study the Internet simulators to be used by the School of Real Projects participants in the Coordination Center’s case projects was also presented at the fair: the Quiz. Visitors to the event had the opportunity to answer questions about the history and infrastructure of the internet, cybersecurity, network culture, Runet, multilingual domains, robotics, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and other IT phenomena. Participants could join teams or compete individually, all of them receiving souvenirs.
Students will have four months to complete their selected tasks. Following this period, a qualifying round will take place; teams that pass the qualifying stage will participate in the final reporting conference in April, where the winners will be announced.
For questions about participation in the School of Real Projects, please contact the organizing committee at srd.orgkomitet@gmail.com.
The contest is organized by the state budgetary educational institution School No. 2086, Moscow Department of Education and Science, Moscow Department of Information Technologies, Department of Economics of Lomonosov Moscow State University, and the National Research University Higher School of Economics. General partners include Bochvar Advanced Research Institute of Inorganic Materials and Volnoye Delo, a foundation to support social innovation.
