258 school students from the 5th to 7th grade were the winners of the third season of the National Technology Olympiad Junior. The exercises required theoretical knowledge of school subjects, as well as practical skills: understanding the basics of algorithms and programming, 3D modeling and printing, working with sensors and robotic components, data collection and analyzing.
The robotics complexes such as Dobot Magician are perfectly suitable for contests like this.
The contest is organized by the Kruzhok movement of NTI, as well the ‘Russia — Land of Opportunity’ platform with the support of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives and the ‘NTI Platform’ non-commercial organization. 583 school students took part in the final stage of contests . The National Technological Olympiad Junior was held for the third time in 2021 for Russian tech-savvy school students from grades 5-7. The total number of participants is more than 70, 000 in 3 years. In 2021, more than 22,114 applications were submitted by school students from 85 regions of Russia.
According to Andrey Siling, CEO of ‘NTI Platform’, it’s important to start training the next generation of technical specialists in schools. He adds: “The creative self-identity forms during the school years, and it’s where the skills for a student’s future engineering mind start to emerge. The initiatives of the Kruzhok movement work based on this logic.”
Final stages of the Olympiad took place in 8 cities between November the 20th and December the 18th 2021: Veliky Novgorod, Vladivostok, Korolev, Novosibirsk, Saint Petersburg, Ufa and Cheboksary. The students from more than 50 regions participated. The largest percentages of final contestants were from the regions of Novosibirsk, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, as well as the Saint Petersburg region, the Republic of Tatarstan, the Volgograd region and the city of Moscow.
The main goal of the contest is to make the school students interested in the world of breakthrough technologies, as well as showing them possible career paths. The contestants of the third season competed in five fields: virtual technologies, space technologies, robotics, environment and human technologies. The tasks were designed to make the students involved in the process.
According to Dmitry Zemtsov, the vice rector of High School of Economics and leader of the working group ‘Kruzhok movement’ of the NTI, the exercises are relevant for the track for grades 8-11. It will form the basis for more complex engineering tasks aimed at high-schoolers. Next year the movement is planning to more actively work on further development of new tasks and exercises. There are other plans: to lengthen the stages that include working as a team, as well as more actively involve parents and mentors into the competition.
The winners and those who placed at the top positions got diplomas and prizes. Everyone is invited to participate next year, as well as to be involved in other projects by the ‘Russia – Land of Opportunity” platform and ‘Kruzhok’ movement: contests, project schools and engineering competitions.
Grigory Gurov, Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education of Russia, says: “Middle school is the time when it’s important to find out what a person is interested in. By the ninth grade, a student has a clearer vision of their professional interests and is getting ready for university enrollment. Many former participants of our competitions mention that the involvement helped them to choose their future paths”.
