青少年创客赢得免费硅谷游

    Florence Liu

    294517726@qq.com

    Two members of a team called Fly, made up of three primary school students from Shenzhen, will go on a tour of Silicon Valley this coming winter vacation after winning a coding competition last summer with their well-designed programing project, titled Spacecraft to Save the Planet.

    The Codemao National Coding Competition, organized by Codemao’s Youth Coding Academy of Sciences, offers full financial support for young techies who win the competition and a tour around Silicon Valley.

    The winning group was awarded the Codemao Silicon Valley Scholarship, which covered all expenses for the winner’s Silicon Valley tour.

    Jiang Zichen and Yao Wei, two members of the Fly team, will visit Stanford, Berkeley and some of the top high-tech companies in the area during their tour this winter.

    The scholarship gives them an opportunity to exchange their knowledge, learning experience and achievements face-to-face with top techies in the most renowned hub of innovation — Silicon Valley.

    The Codemao National Coding Competition is an important annual event of Codemao’s Youth Coding Academy of Sciences. The goal is to encourage children to strive for the opportunity to visit Silicon Valley, the global intellectual and innovative center, and to provide them a first-hand experience with cutting-edge science and technology.

    Jiang, the Fly team’s leader, is a fifth grader from Shenzhen Houhai Primary School. His superior programing skills not only won him the top prize at the competition, but also the title of Little Academician of Codemao for which Jiang became a “celebrity” at his school.

    However, the process of winning the scholarship was not easy. The competition included several rounds which lasted for about six weeks. The final score determined the team’s ranking.

    The team’s project, Spacecraft to Save the Planet, was set in a scenario where the earth was experiencing a crisis and the players needed to use a spacecraft to find a new planet for survival.

    Many hurdles existed in every part of the game and players could easily lose the game if they weren’t careful enough. His father feels pleased about the opportunity to go to Silicon Valley. “My son has the chance to experience the atmosphere of Silicon Valley and hopefully he can learn a lot from the experience,” said the father.

    Jiang said his dream is to study computer science at Stanford University in the future. For the upcoming Silicon Valley tour, he feels thrilled. “My dad told me that the students there have endless assignments.

    If possible I would like to ask them about the amount of homework they have so I can be prepared in the future when I go to study there,” said Jiang.

    In mid-October of 2016, the Shenzhen Municipal Education Bureau issued the Guidebook on the Construction of Maker Education Courses for Primary and Secondary Schools in Shenzhen.

    The guidebook is the culmination of the demand for the development of maker-orientated education to match the current technological era.

    With the support of the policy, mass innovation has become the key words in education and primary school students serve to benefit from these changes.