Summer Informatics School: Bringing School Teachers, College Teachers and IT Industry Professionals Together
Head of informatics (programming) departament of Moscow school for gifted children «Intellectual», Vice-director of SIS
Analyst, Yandex, Teacher of SIS
Senior software developer, Yandex, Teacher of SIS
The IT industry is developing very rapidly. Often the knowledge acquired by young people in schools and universities is out of date by the time they get a job. This is why IT companies often offer internships to retrain young staff. They also have to participate in secondary and post-secondary education, otherwise they would soon experience staff shortage.
Colleges are often disappointed with the applicants’ qualifications too. One of the major reasons behind this is lack of interaction mechanisms between secondary schools, colleges and employers. The concept of a summer school actually implies cooperation between school teachers, students, college professors and industry professionals, which allows them to find common ground, if only on a small scale.
There are various summer schools on a wide range of topics but they often follow similar organizational principles. Secondary school students have to write an application; if it is successful, the applicant can join the summer camp. There are classes every morning. At the end of the summer school the participants have to take a test.
Summer Informatics School (SIS) is aimed at 12 to 17-year-olds who want to learn how to code.
How SIS Is Organized
SIS takes place in the countryside at a recreation facility; there are two 21-day-long sessions. At each session there are about 250 participants of varying qualifications: some are beginners in coding, some are the country’s smartest students.
To get admitted, SIS applicants have to fill in a topics questionnaire and solve several problems. In the questionnaire one has to indicate which topics he or she is familiar with and which algorithms he or she can already write. The ways admission problems were solved show how well the students know the topics they have indicated in the topics questionnaire.
SIS is conducted in Russian and this is the only restriction for participation: secondary school students from all over the world are welcome. Traditionally participants come from all over Russia as well as from other former Soviet countries. There were also participants from Bulgaria, Sweden, Italy, the UK and the U.S.
Participation costs about 40,000 rubles (650 USD) per session. Those students who cannot afford to pay the fees in full can apply for a partial waiver, which is possible thanks to SIS sponsors.
Education at SIS
Computer science is the core of SIS educational program: it includes design and analysis of algorithms and data structures, skills for writing reliable code and testing it.
The fact that school teachers, professors and industry professionals work together allows SIS to split the participants by level and field of study: they are divided into several parallel groups upon admittance. Group D is for beginners: they study easy topics such as Euclidean algorithm, binary search and quadratic sorts. Group A is for the most qualified students, e.g., participants of the International Olympiad in Informatics. Group A studies, for example, suffix arrays and Dinic's algorithm for computing the maximum flow. Besides computer science groups there is also group P with a focus on industrial software engineering. It is a small startup. SIS participants in group P work on their own unique project. It helps train teamwork skills and provides an opportunity to work on a real task.
In the morning, before lunch, there are compulsory classes: two hours of theory and two hours of practice. Computer labs stay open from lunch untill dinner so that the participants can further work on their assignments. In the first two hours after lunch there are optional courses: short lectures on a broad range of topics which usually aren’t directly related to SIS curriculum, e.g., physics, math, medicine. Lectures are organized by SIS teachers, guests and by representatives of the sponsors. After that students can take part in recreational activities: join the drawing club, guitar club or movie club. There are 3 to 4 optional courses and 3 to 4 different clubs every day, so the participants are free to choose what they find interesting. After dinner there are extra camp-wide activities: intellectual games, campfire, theater, social dance, etc. Various sports competitions (from volleyball and football to chess) are also organized during each SIS session.
In the end the participants have to take a theoretical test and a practical one. They get two days to prepare for the test. In this period there are no classes; however, computer labs stay open, and the students are free to seek advice from SIS academic staff. It is often in this very period or even during the test that the students finally get to understand some of the topics discussed during classes.
Some secondary school students and their families believe that SIS is aimed at training students for Olympiads in Informatics. Formally this is not a goal for SIS, unlike special Olympiad training camps. SIS participants’ success at Olympiads in Informatics is rather a consequence of their hard work. In the end, SIS alumni perform at various Olympiads very well, and the students who take part in such Olympiads strive to come to SIS.
SIS Goals
SIS was launched in 1999. Originally it was just a summer camp for the students of one particular school but it started expanding very soon. First, students from neighboring regions started coming, and in 2004-2005 the school reached national scale: there were participants coming from all over the country, from Saint Petersburg to Barnaul, as well as from abroad.
The role of SIS has changed over time. In the early 2000s, SIS was basically the only place where young people – especially those coming from rural areas – could learn coding at a high level. Nowadays, as access to the Internet has grown and there are online courses and testing systems available, everyone has an opportunity to learn. SIS is now aimed at kindling interest in young people and creating stimuli for their further unsupervised work. Another goal is to bring together young people who share similar interests so that they can get to know each other. Three of our alumni, for example, who became friends at SIS, have launched their own startup in Portugal.
Nearly all SIS academic staff have participated in and/or organized Olympiads in Informatics; many of them are jury members at the Olympiads of various levels, including the final stage of the All-Russian Olympiad of School Students. Many staff members work in leading IT companies (such as Google, Yandex, VKontakte and others).
First of all, companies support SIS because they can directly see what the money are spent on, and secondly, many SIS alumni start working later for these companies. Their employees can organize both session-long courses and short optional courses.
It is worth noting that cooperation between school and college teachers and industry professionals within one educational project is very fruitful. In addition to the facts that have already been mentioned above (the success of SIS alumni at various Olympiads, a chance to find employment with the leaders of IT industry), SIS has another very important effect. Experience shows that SIS actually sets standards in the sphere of IT education in Russia. In 2011, for example, SIS started teaching the youngest groups in Python because it turned out to be very efficient. At the time, nearly no one in Russia was using Python when working with school students. Nowadays many of Russia’s leading schools use Python, and that number is growing every year.