GISMART WILL TRAIN SCHOOLCHILDREN PROGRAMMING MUSICIAN ROBOTS

Gismart, a developer of musical apps, together with the Association “Education for Future” has launched a program “Orchestra of Robots” and will train schoolchildren to program robots–musicians. Over the summer, children should teach robots to play melodies similar to musical works. The first lesson was held at the Gismart office, the rest – in the STEAM class, which the company opened at Dubrovno secondary school No.2.  

According to Alexander Khomich, a director of the Association “Education for Future”, children's background is different, many of them could not name seven notes, did not know what a musical staff was. But after classes with an experienced musician, conductor Maria Kolesnikova, they played their first composition on improvised instruments that were found in Gismart kitchen – spoons and glasses.

After that, the teacher of robotics worked with the schoolchildren.

“In our time every person should understand how the technical world is organized, and all that is the basics of algorithmization, – explains Oksana Bukina. – Of course, in a short time you can only give a concept and outline the framework. Our current task is to understand what a cycle and an algorithm are, understand its sequence and basic properties”.

Gismart produced an idea to launch this project after the opening of a STEAM–center in Dubrovno school.

“When we opened the STEAM class, some teachers in the school did not understand why we need it, – says Yevgeny Nagel, Gismart director. – In the process of dialogue we have managed to convince them that we are not doing anything terrible, we do not want to increase their workloads, etc., we just want to show that there is something else besides what they are used to. We would like to see changes in education approaches and in children's attitude to the learning process”.

This project is not a part of a corporate social responsibility program.

– We do it not because there are recommendations of HTP. No. We do it on a voluntary basis. Our activities are partly related to art, and we think that by mixing technology and music, you can get something interesting. It may be easier for children to perceive information and understand what STEAM is,” – explained the director of the company.

As the project is long–playing, Gismart will help the children to program robots remotely. “There is no adequeate expertise at the school, there are few teachers who understand what Scratch is. Therefore, we will be connected all summer with the pupils,” – Nagel says.

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