03/12/2018
“Coding Tomorrow” Project Participant Students From Adana Take Off To China.
“XSun Team” formed by the students of Adana Vakıfbank Middle School joins the MakeX Robotics Competition 2018 Global Final in China on December, as one of the participants of “Coding Tomorrow” Project carried out with the cooperation of Vodafone Turkey Foundation, Habitat Association and Ministry of Social Services. “XSun Team” will travel to China by the sponsorship of Vodafone Turkey Association and Habitat Association to compete with 350 teams joining the grand final from over ten countries.
Vodafone Turkey Foundation operates with the aim of pioneering social change and development, continues to prepare young generations for digital future within the scope of “Coding Tomorrow” project in collaboration with Habitat Association and Ministry of Labour, Social Services and Family. “XSun Team” formed by the students of Adana Vakıfbank Middle School participated in the trainings and children’s hackathon within the scope of the project, will join the MakeX Robotics Competition 2018 Global Final in China on December, after succeeding in MakeX Robotics Competition 2018 Turkey Final in İstanbul on May by taking the 3rd place from among 46 teams. “XSun Team” will travel to China by the sponsorship of Vodafone Turkey Association and Habitat Association to compete with 350 teams joining the grand final from over ten countries. XSun Team members, Onur Ata Özyiğit, Deniz Gündeşlioğlu, Arda Uğurludemir, and Ata Saatçi are being led by Classroom Teacher Abdurrahman Gündeşlioğlu as the team coach.
Vodafone Turkey Foundation Chairman Hasan Süel has stated:
“In order to produce technology, it is necessary to learn coding, which is accepted as the language of the digital world. With our coding training, our children have an idea about programming, work to bring out their creativity, create their imaginary worlds, and they can produce their games. For them, we are opening the doors of innovative thinking. We have been continuing our project successfully for two years. In this period, we trained more than 12.000 children for coding. In the new period, our target is to reach 20.000 new children. We hit the road with Coding Tomorrow Truck to realize this target. We want to reach as many children as we can by traveling through villages and towns. “XSun Team” formed by Adana Vakıfbank Middle School students that participated in our project, has earned a significant success by taking the 3rd place out of 46 teams in MakeX Robotics Competition Turkey Final in May. And now with the sponsorship of our Foundation, they will be one of the representatives of our country in China. We congratulate them and look forward to their new achievements.”
The Head of Habitat Association Chairman Sezai Hazır stated:
Through the “Coding Tomorrow” project, we aim to realize our transformation in informatics with children. Knowing about coding is now as important as literacy. As in all European countries, the biggest obstacle for engaging encoding to the Turkish education system is the lack of trained educators to provide this training. In this regard, we train young people within the scope of our project, and they deliver their knowledge to children. With our Coding Tomorrow Training Truck, we are aiming to reach the children who cannot have such technology training in the disadvantaged regions in our country. One of the participants of our project, “XSun Team” formed by the students of Adana Vakıfbank Middle School, has taken place in our coding trainings in Adana, succeeded in children’s hackathon and prepared for this competition with the help of our voluntary teachers. We hope they will achieve a bright future by working hard and systematically. We are very proud to be represented by them in China. I congratulate them and their teachers.”
Four teams in total competed
More than 200 middle and elementary school students from over seven cities have competed in MakeX Robotics Competition 2018 Turkey Final which is held in Turkey for the first time. There were four teams in the competition among “Coding Tomorrow” project participants. While “XSun Team” from Adana takes the 3rd place, “Guardians Planet” from Kayseri has taken 7th, “Phoenix” from Denizli has taken 8th, and “Kodadası” from Kuşadası has taken 9th place in the competition. Teams that take the first four places in MakeX Robotics Competition 2018 Turkey Final will fly to China to participate in the Global Final.
Target: Reaching 30 thousand children
In the scope of “Coding Tomorrow” project, children aged between 7 and 14 are given coding trainings all over Turkey. Basic coding program Scratch is used in the trainings, which is developed for children by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) known as the best technical university in the world. Led by the voluntary teachers, both theoretic and practical trainings such as introduction to programming, coding applications, creating stories and making games were given to more than 12.000 students in over 30 cities since August 2016. In the new period of the project, Coding Tomorrow Truck will travel more than 6.000 km in almost seven months to reach more than 2.500 children in over 12 cities and give coding trainings all over the country. The target of the project is to introduce coding to 30.000 children in 60 cities until the end of April 2019.
Global competition based in China
International MakeX Robotics Competition is being held since 2017 with the target of being the most prestigious robotics competition in the world. In the MakeX events held more than ten times so far, one thousand teams have participated formed by 5 thousand teens in total, predominantly aged between 6-19 years. Alongside with Turkey, countries such as France, Estonia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Indonesia also participate in the event which targets to introduce STEAM trainings (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics) to more children and teens. 500 Chinese Yuan will be distributed to the participants of 350 teams from over ten countries in the Global Final of the event on December, supported by global associations such as World Robot Conference, Robotex and RoboRAVE.