The EOS Foundation announced the Informatica 365 project, in partnership with Microsoft. The idea from which it started was that informatics, but also ICT, must be approached with modern tools.
The project targets secondary school teachers who teach Computer Science and ICT, but the final beneficiaries are the students. Through this program, they can acquire programming knowledge through Minecraft for Education and Creative Programming through Games and Apps courses.
Through this program, Romania is getting closer to other countries in Europe, where informatics is a basic subject and new tools are already being used. In case the subject is foreign to you in Romania, there are still schools (very many) where C++ or Pascal are programming languages that students should learn.
The education system will never be able to keep up with market demand, but it can come close. For that, properly trained teachers are also needed, which the Informatica 365 program hopes to provide.
The project supports the initiative of the Ministry of Education to introduce programming at an early stage of the educational cycle. Teachers will be able to take Minecraft for Education and Creative Programming through Games and Apps courses.
Minecraft for Education is an educational version of Minecraft (owned by Microsoft) and is an interactive teaching tool. With its help, children will learn programming terms and carry out individual and team projects. Thus they will be able to understand notions of code, geometry and will be initiated into fields such as archaeology, architecture or morphology.
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Creative Programming through Games and Applications is a suite of courses developed in TouchDevelop technology. The course is intended to stimulate creativity and curiosity for computer science. Through play, students will learn to write code and assimilate terms from the software programming vocabulary.
The investment is 200,000 dollars and includes the accreditation of the two courses mentioned above and the translation of the didactic resources into Romanian. Through the program, 3,300 teachers will be trained, especially from disadvantaged and rural areas.