When Children Want to Study even During the School Break

Not the school break, tropical heat, or supercells prevented the children eager to learn programming from acquiring additional knowledge this summer in the field of their preferred future profession. Python programming and working in its 2D graphics library Pygame, robotics workshops, meeting IT industry professionals and mentors always ready to lift the level just a tiny bit higher, all these things waited for them at the “Summer School of Programming”. Around 50 students of the upper primary schools accepted the challenges gladly. From 28 July to 4 August, in Sremska Mitrovica, they were developing their IT skills and sharing their experiences and knowledge with their peers. 

For the attendees of this summer school, programs, codes, seeking solutions, testing and debugging – in short, programming – is a language as easily adopted as reading or writing. “I have certainly been curious by nature, since my earliest childhood. The more you learn, the more curious you get. You get more aware of how little you actually know, and you want to learn more,” honestly reflects Danica Grabovac, a girl who finished seventh grade in Kragujevac, as she eagerly waits for a class dedicated to Microbit* to begin. 

Nikolina Zdravković from Padinska Skela is inspired by her two older sister, mathematicians/programmers. As she waits for her first year in the IT class of the First Belgrade Grammar School to commence, she spends a part of her summer holiday studying. “I am currently really interested in this. I came here because I find programming to be highly interesting and it makes me happy. I think I will make this my profession. I don’t have this felling like: Wow, now I do something that my entire future depends on, but I’m having fun.” Once the school year commences, Marko Krstić from Sremska Mitrovica will turn 13. He says that he is good at drawing and he can see himself as an architect, he is interested in electronics and not averse to the world of finance, yet when he talks about programming, he gets emotional: “I love making something myself. I create my own servers. If something I need does not exist, I can make it, or automate the things I like. Currently I am more web-based, I make websites, but I still like Python.”  

The summer school’s curriculum is designed to motivate those that are only at the beginning and to stimulate those whose knowledge is more advanced. The six lecturers, students of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Faculty of Technical Sciences, are here to share their knowledge, and help the children with the problems they cannot solve. In the mornings, children learn and work in the classrooms of the IT lab of Sremska Mitrovica Grammar School. The second part of the day is reserved for meetings with mentors, games, sports and excursions. 

“We try to find interested and motivated children from all over Serbia and then it is up to us to maintain this motivation of theirs, to offer them some new skills, new knowledge. Then perhaps we might meet again the following year, and continue,” says Katarina Anđelković, Program Director of the Petlja Foundation which has organised this summer school since last year, together with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The amount of interest for the Summer School of Programming is reflected in the fact that this year, 210 applications had been received, while the selection process resulted in admitting 100 candidates 11 to 14 years old.  

“For 2 years now, UNDP, together with our colleagues from the Petlja Foundation and the Ministry of Education, have been inventing and implementing activities that would help children to become ready for the future and the jobs it may have in store for them, that are possibly not invented yet. Every child in Serbia should be given a chance to improve his/her skills, with a window open to new technologies through conversations with IT industry professionals, and offered a safe environment in which they would work together with their peers, learn from them and exchange experiences. The smiles on the children’s faces as they leave the camp and eagerly expect the next one, are the best reward for our efforts,” pointed out Jelena Ružičić, UNDP Portfolio Manager for Digital Innovations. 

The Summer School of Programming does not issue diplomas, or certificates, and does not choose the best students, but rather promotes teamwork. “They are here for their own sake and that is the one message that we try to communicate to them” explains Katarina Anđelković. The children have indeed realised that. What is more, they are ready to work on their projects even in their own spare time, in the students’ dormitory where they are accommodated. Marko is one of them: “Python is a programming language that contains different libraries. It also contains different mathematical formulas and you can use it to create all sorts of things. Today I plan to finish my videogame.” 

In addition to programming and more than videogames, Danica is interested in electronics. She came to the Summer School of Programming with the well-defined idea that she wants to develop:  “I would like to make my own machines. I am currently interested in small kitchen appliances. For example, I have been thinking about making a pancake machine. I had this idea for the design, but I didn’t know how to make the program for it. We need to explain the machine what it needs to do, it won’t work on its own. I knew this was a perfect opportunity. Of course, here we don’t learn how to create a pancake maker, I learn programming and things that would be useful for me anyway.” 

Attendees of the Summer School of Programming are children motivated by programming, “The ideal scenario is for them to be stimulated to work additionally after school. We can see this in some children who were here the last year, because they have made so much progress in the meantime. This is due to their efforts. If we can stimulate them to continue working on their own, that is a small victory”, concludes Nevenka Nogo, Project Assistant in the Petlja Foundation. And as the first shift had finished for this year, the second shift started just before the beginning of the regular school year. Another 50 students will learn programming in Sremska Mitrovica 23-30 August. 

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The Summer School of Programming is organized by the Petlja Foundation within the “Building Key Computing Competencies - Towards the Workforce of the Future” implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, with the support of the Government of the Republic of Serbia. 

*Microbit is a pocket micro-computer, developed primarily to engage children and attract their interest to programming. It is used as a tool in learning programming, critical thinking and problem solving. The Microbit’s “brain” is an ARM processor, and the main communication with the user is enabled through buttons and light diodes located on the gadget. Additionally, Microbit is equipped with many sensors which enable different interesting applications of this micro-computer.