Samsung IT School Graduate Wins «Trajectory of the Future» Olympiad

The Samsung IT School project also became a partner of the International Certification Olympiad (VII season)

Samsung IT School is the educational project of Samsung Electronics. It is a partner of the International Certification Olympiad «Trajectory of the Future». Samsung IT School sums up the results of its VII season. The semi-finals and finals of the Olympiad were held in the Samsung IT School educational system, and Samsung experts developed tasks for its section dedicated to the development of an application for the Android OS.

The winner of the Olympiad in the «Development of mobile applications for Android» nomination is Igor Efimov. He is a graduate of the Samsung IT School in the IT-cube digital education center in Tomsk. In addition, Igor is the winner of the Grand Prix of the graduation projects competition «IT School chooses the strongest!» in 2021. IT School graduates Roman Legonkov and Vladislav Netaev also won prizes, receiving silver and bronze, respectively. The participants of the final, who scored the maximum number of points for completing the task, will receive certificates from Samsung confirming the high level of mobile application development skills, and memorable gifts. The award ceremony will take place on April 29, 2022, as part of the Summit of the Association of Certification Specialists «Antifragility of the Russian IT Education Market. The New Reality of Personnel Training and Evaluation».

«Trajectory of the Future» is an international certification Olympiad for schoolchildren and students from 13 to 23 years old, which helps to start a career while studying. Participants who have scored a certain number of points are issued a certificate, which is entered into the international register of specialists. The winners get an opportunity to take an internship in leading IT companies and gain valuable experience. The organizer of the Olympiad is the International Association of Certification Specialists; The event is supported by leading Russian universities.

In the VII season of the Olympiad, 18 nominations are presented, including Microsoft Office Specialist, Autodesk Certified User, Adobe Certified Associate, Cisco, Oracle, Python, and others. Samsung specialists and Samsung IT School teachers acted as experts in the Mobile Development Olympiad nomination. They prepared tasks for all three stages: the general test in computer science and mathematics at the regional stage, the semi-final test on developing mobile applications for Android in Java and Kotlin, and the final task — creating an application according to the technical task. For the first time, the answers of the Olympiad participants were evaluated using a system of automatic code verification by unit tests.

544 participants from 143 cities and towns in 61 regions of Russia took part in the first round of the Olympiad. They were tested on the school course of computer science and mathematics on the StartExam platform. 96 participants from 38 cities in 30 regions reached the semi-finals. In the second round, testing was devoted to the Android applications development: knowledge of Java or Kotlin, work with the XML markup, JSON data representation, and REST architecture. Most of the questions were practical and required writing a program fragment or an XML/JSON file. 13 participants from six cities in six regions became finalists.

In the final, the participants had to develop a mobile application following the technical task. Young programmers had to demonstrate their competencies in interface layout, programming the business logic of a mobile application, creating notifications, and interacting with network services. The correctness of the task was automatically checked using a system that is used in the mobile application development courses of Samsung IT School and Samsung IT Academy.

Five out of 13 participants who reach the final are graduates of the Samsung IT School, and four of them scored the maximum score for completing the final task.

«Noticing the annual growth in demand for digital skills and acutely feeling the lack of IT specialists in the market, we are responding to this request with a social project that has involved thousands of children across the country — the Trajectory of the Future Olympiad. And we are especially pleased that this year we became partners with Samsung IT School, which supported the Android Mobile Application Development nomination. Together we are strengthening our positions and providing even more new opportunities for participants,» commented Svetlana Morokhova who is the Chairman of the Olympiad Organizing Committee and the Director of the Association of Certification Specialists.

Samsung IT School is a social and educational project that is being implemented as part of the Samsung Innovation Campus global initiative. 9–10 year schoolchildren are the participants of this project. They receive knowledge and practical skills in developing mobile applications in Java for Android. In November 2021, Samsung Innovation Campus was awarded 1st place in the «Leaders of the Future» nomination of the All-Russian contest of best practices in the social and humanitarian sphere «Creating the Future». In December 2021, the Samsung Innovation Campus became a laureate in the Education and Human Resources nomination of the Runet Prize 2021.

On April 1, admission to Samsung IT School for the 2022/2023 academic year started.