IT School Samsung: teach students to develop mobile applications

Today our post is about mobile applications of graduates of IT SAMSUNG SCHOOLS. Let's start with a brief reference about IT SCHOOL (for details, please visit our website and / or ask questions in the comments). In the second part we will talk about the best, in our opinion, Android-applications that schoolchildren of 6-11 classes created!

About IT SCHOOL SAMSUNG

IT SCHOOL SAMSUNG is a social and educational program for schoolchildren, which operates in 22 cities of Russia. The Russian headquarters of Samsung Electronics initiated the program 5 years ago to support high school students who are passionate about programming. In 2013, the specialists of the Samsung Moscow Research Center together with the MIPT solved a difficult task - they developed a Java programming course for students for Android. Together with local authorities, we chose partners - schools and centers for further education. And most importantly, they found colleagues with the necessary qualifications: teachers, professors from universities and professional developers who liked the idea of ​​teaching children about native mobile development. By September 2014, Samsung had equipped 38 training classes where classes for high school students began.


The signing of a memorandum of cooperation between Samsung and the Kazan Federal University with the participation of the President of the Republic of Tatarstan, Mr. Minnikhanov, November 2013

Since then (since 2014), we have been receiving more than 1,000 schoolchildren annually , and they complete an annual course for free .

How is the training? Classes begin in September and end in May, take place on schedule, once or twice a week for a total of 4 academic hours.

The course consists of modules, after each module - a difficult test to verify the knowledge gained, and at the end of the year students need to develop and submit their project - a mobile application.

Yes, the program turned out to be difficult, which is quite natural, given the amount of knowledge that is required to get a result. Especially if our task is to teach programming correctly. But this cannot be done by building training on the “do the same as me” method, it is necessary to give a basic understanding of the theoretical foundations of the studied programming sections. Over the past 4 years, the course has evolved significantly. Together with the teachers of the program, we tried to find a compromise on the level of complexity, the balance of theory and practice, forms of control and many other issues. But it was not easy to do this: more than fifty teachers from all over Russia are involved in the program, and all of them are very caring and enthusiastic people with an individual view on learning programming!

Below are the current names of the modules of the IT program SAMSUNG SCHOOL, which will tell a lot to readers who are interested in programming about their content:

1. Basics of Java Programming
2. Introduction to Object Oriented Programming
3. Android Application Programming Basics
4. Algorithms and data structures in Java
5. Basics of developing the server side of mobile applications

In addition to classes, from the middle of the school year, the children begin to discuss the topic of the project and start developing their own mobile application, and at the end of the training they are represented by commissions. The usual practice is to invite local university teachers and professional developers as external members of the attestation commission.


The project “Mobile Assistant Driver”, for which Kolodkin Pavel (Chelyabinsk) received in 2016 a grant to study at the MIPT

In case of successful completion of training, graduates of the program receive certificates from Samsung.


Graduation at the site in Nizhny Novgorod

We are convinced that our graduates are special: they know how to learn independently, they have experience in project activities. I am glad that a number of leading Russian universities supported the children and our program - additional points are given when they enroll for the certificate of a graduate of IT SAMSUNG SCHOOL and the diploma of the winner of the competition “IT SCHOOL selects the strongest!”.

The program has many awards from the business community, including the prestigious Runet Prize.


Runet Award 2016 in the category "Science and Education"

Alumni projects

The brightest event of the program is the annual federal competition “IT SCHOOL selects the strongest!”. The competition is held among all graduates. Only 15-17 best projects from more than 600 applicants are selected for the finals, and their schoolchildren, along with teachers, are invited to Moscow for the last stage of the competition.

What project themes are students choosing?

Of course, games! The guys think that they understand them, and they get down to business with great enthusiasm. In addition to technical problems, they solve design problems (someone draws himself, someone attracts friends who are capable of drawing), then they face the task of setting the game balance, lack of time, etc. ... and contrary to everything, every year we see simply stunning samples of the entertainment genre!

Educational applications are also popular. What is quite clear: the guys are still studying, and they want to make this process fun and interesting, to help friends or younger children in the family.

And a special place is occupied by social applications. Their greatest value is the idea. To notice a social problem, to understand it and to propose a solution is a great achievement at school age.

We can confidently say that we are proud of the level of development of graduates! And so that you can get acquainted with the projects of the guys "live", we made a selection of applications that are available in GooglePlay (to go to the app store, click the link on the project name).

So, further on the applications and their young authors.

Entertainment applications

Tiny Lands - more than 100 thousand downloads

The author of the project is Egor Alexandrov, he is a graduate of the very first graduation of 2015 from the Moscow site at TemoCentre. He became one of the winners of the finals of the first IT SCHOOL contest in the category of gaming applications.

Tiny Lands is a military strategy. The player is invited to develop settlements from a tiny village to the city, extracting resources and fighting. It is noteworthy that Egor was carrying out the idea of ​​this game a long time ago, he invented many heroes even before studying at SCHOOL, when he tried to make a game of Pascal. Judge for yourself what happened at the grade 10 student!



Heroes and buildings "Tiny Lands"

Now Egor is a student at a Moscow university. He is passionate about robotics, and in his new projects it is interestingly combined with mobile development: a robot playing chess or a device printing messages from a telephone in the form of a telegram .


Chess game with a robot

Touch Cube Lite - winner of the Grand Prix Competition 2015

The author of the project is Grigory Senchenok, he is also a student of the most memorable first issue in TemoCentre Moscow. The teacher is Konorkin Ivan.


Grigory's speech at the finals of the competition “IT School: Chooses the Strongest!” 2015

Touch Cube is an application for those who like to create objects in three-dimensional space. You can design any object from small cubes. Moreover, each cube can be set to any RGB color and even make it transparent. The resulting models can be saved and shared.

To deal with 3D, Gregory independently mastered the elements of linear algebra, because the school curriculum does not include vector space transformations. At the competition, he enthusiastically talked about his plans to commercialize the application. We see that he now has some experience with this issue: now the store has 2 versions available - free with ads and paid without ads. The free version has more than 5,000 downloads.

DrumHero - more than 100 thousand downloads

As the name suggests, DrumHero is a version of the famous Guitar Hero game from our 2016 graduate Shamil Magomedov. He studied at the Samsung Technical Education Center in Moscow under Vladimir Ilyin.


Shamil at the finals of the competition “IT-SCHOOL chooses the strongest!”, 2016

Shamil is a fan of the rhythm game genre, convinced that he is still relevant and, judging by the popularity of the application, he was not mistaken! In its application, the player in rhythm with the music being played must, on time and with the desired duration, press to the corresponding areas on the screen.

In addition to the gameplay, Shamil added the ability to upload his own music. To do this, he had to deal with the MIDI storage format, which allows you to pull out the necessary sequence of commands for the game from the source music file. Given that there are many applications that convert common music formats, such as MP3 and AVI to MIDI, the idea was definitely a good one. I am glad that Shamil constantly supports his school project, an update has just been released.

Social applications

ProBonoPublico - Grand Prix 2016

The author of the project is Dmitry Pasechnyuk, a graduate of IT SCHOOLS SAMSUNG 2016 from the Center for the Development of Gifted Children of Kaliningrad Region, the teacher is Arthur Baboshkin.

ProBonoPublico is intended for people willing to engage in charity, namely: to provide people in difficult life situations with qualified legal or psychological assistance on pro bono terms (from the Latin. "For the public good"), i.e. on a volunteer basis. As an organizer of such communication (administrators), public and charitable organizations, crisis centers are offered. The application includes a client mobile part for a volunteer and a web application for the administrator.

Video about the application:


The noble idea of ​​the project won the jury of the competition, and it was unanimously given to the Grand Prix of the competition. In general, Dmitry is one of the brightest graduates in the history of our program. He won the IT SCHOOL competition, having finished only the 6th grade of secondary school! And he didn’t stop there, he is the winner of many contests and competitions, including NTI, I am a professional. In an interview last year on the Rusbase portal, he said that he was now interested in data analysis and neural networks.

In the fall of 2017, Dmitry and his teacher, Arthur Baboshkin, at the invitation of the President of Samsung Electronics headquarters in Russia and the CIS, took part in the Olympic torch relay in South Korea.


Dmitry Pasechnyuk - one of the first torchbearers of the Winter Olympics Relay Phenchkhan 2018

Enliven - Grand Prix 2017

The author of the project is Vladislav Tarasov, Moscow graduate of IT school SAMSUNG 2017, teacher Vladimir Ilyin.

Vladislav decided to help in solving the problem of urban ecology, and above all - the disposal of garbage. In the Enliven application, the map shows the ecological points of the city of Moscow: places for processing paper, glass, plastic, educational centers, and so on. Through the application, you can find out the address, opening hours, contacts and other information about the eco-point and get directions to it. In the form of a game, the user is invited to perform the right actions - to visit eco-points for points, thanks to which you can raise your rank, save animals, trees and people.


Screenshots of the application "Enliven"

The Enliven project received the Grand Prix of the annual IT SCHOOL competition in the summer of 2017. And in the fall, Vladislav took part in the Young Innovators competition at the Moscow City of Education, where he took second place and received a special prize from Rybakov Fund in the amount of 150,000 rubles for the development of the application.


Presentation of the Grand Prix Competition 2017

Educational applications

MyGIA 4 - preparation for CDF 4 class

The author of the project is Demidovich Egor, student of 2017 from the Novosibirsk site of IT SCHOOLS SAMSUNG, teacher Pavel Mul. MyGIA project is one of the winners of the last project competition.


Egor at the finals of the contest “IT School: Chooses the Strongest!”, 2017

What is CDF? This is a nationwide test paper, which is written at the end of primary school. And, believe me, for kids this is a serious test. Egor developed the MyGIA application to assist in the preparation of the main subjects: mathematics, Russian language and the surrounding world. It is noteworthy that tasks are generated automatically, eliminating the possibility of memorizing tasks. On defense, Egor told me that he had to draw more than 80 pictures, and in order to be able to issue and verify "certificates" in addition to the application itself, it implemented the server part. The application is constantly updated, recently questions were added to the mathematics of the CDF 2018. Now he has more than 10 thousand downloads.


Screenshots of the MyGIA application

Electricity - virtual reality application

The author of the project is Andrei Andryushchenko, a graduate of IT School SAMSUNG 2015 from Khabarovsk, a teacher Konstantin Kanaev. This project was not created while studying at our school, it has a different story.


Andrey with his teacher at the competition, 2015

In July 2015, Andrey became the winner of the “IT SCHOOL chooses the strongest!” Competition in the “Programming” nomination with the Gravity Particles project. The idea was entirely Andrew - in the form of a game to get acquainted with the basic physical laws, primarily implementing the laws of Coulomb and world wide. The jury liked the application very much how the code was written, but the implementation clearly lacked three-dimensionality. In the end, after the contest, the idea was born to support Andrei and to invite him to create a version of the game for the VR VR glasses. This is how the new Electricity project was born, which was created with the support of the VR / AR guru, Fascinating Reality. And although Andrey had to master a completely different toolkit (C # and Unity), he successfully coped with it!

Electricity is a 3D visualization of the propagation of electric current in three conductors: metal, liquid and gas. The demonstration is accompanied by a voice explanation of the observed physical phenomena. The application has been demonstrated at several Russian and foreign exhibitions. At the Moscow Science Festival in 2016, queues lined up for our stand in order to try the app.


Electricity at the Science Festival in Moscow, 2016

Where we are going and, of course, how to reach us

Today IT SCHOOL SAMSUNG works in 22 cities of Russia. And our primary task is to give the opportunity to study programming to an even greater number of schoolchildren, to replicate our experience. In September 2018, the author's electronic textbook will be published, based on the SAMSUNG SCHOOL IT program. It is intended for those initiative educational institutions that want to launch such a course. The teachers, having adopted our materials, will be able to organize training in the native development for Android in their regions.

And in conclusion, information for those who have decided to come to us: now is the time to do it! The admission campaign began for the 2018-2019 school year.

Short instructions:

1. The program accepts schoolchildren of senior (mainly 9-10) classes and college students under the age of 17 years (inclusive).
2. Check on our site that you have an IT SCHOOL site near you: will it be possible to come to class? We remind you that classroom full-time.
3. Fill out and submit an application .
4. Pass the first stage of entrance tests - online test. The test is small and fairly simple. It contains tasks for logic, number systems and programming. The latter are easily rendered by guys who confidently own branch and cycle operators, are familiar with arrays, and write in the Pascal or C programming languages. As a rule, if you score 6 points out of 9 possible, then this is enough for an invitation to stage 2.
5. The date of the second stage of entrance examinations you will be informed in the letter. You will need to come directly to the IT SCHOOL site that you chose when submitting the application. The test can be in the form of an oral interview or problem solving, but in any case it is aimed at checking the ability to algorithmize and the ability to program.
6. Enrollment takes place on a competitive basis. Everyone who arrives receives a letter with the result. Classes begin in the second or third week of September.

When 4 years ago we opened an educational program for schoolchildren, we were among the first to come out with such a serious program for this audience. Years later, we see that they successfully study in universities, implement interesting projects and find themselves in the profession (whether it is programming or a related field). We do not set ourselves the task of preparing professional developers in just a year (this is simply impossible!), But we definitely give the kids a ticket to the world of an exciting profession!

The author: Svetlana Yun
Head of the Ecosystem Development Group, Samsung Business Research Labs, Samsung Research Center
Samsung IT SCHOOL Educational Project Manager