This is the season in which IIIT Hyderabad deals with children much younger than its undergraduates! The STEP progam for school children (https://www.iiit.ac.in/step/) was inaugurated on 6th May.

Its annual school outreach programme for 7 – 10 grade students from 6 – 31 May. The programme had a strong focus on computational thinking with an objective to equip young minds with fundamental computational skills that are increasingly pertinent in today’s world. Through this unique outreach programme, IIIT-Hyderabad aims to spread the concept of computational thinking to a larger community.  The curriculum is designed to enable young minds to build logical thinking, problem solving and analytical skills through theoretical as well as hands-on sessions. These programmes were based on the premise that whichever career the student chooses to pursue later in life, computational thinking will be an essential element. The success of this School Outreach Activity is visible as some of the former students have not only performed very well but some of them have qualified for the National Olympiads.   

According to Prof P J Narayanan, IIIT-H started a Computational Thinking summer program for children who completed 7th to 10th classes back in 2014. This year’s is the 6th edition. Faculty members and other experts talk about computational thinking in different areas: art, music, maths, etc., to a senior group (classes 9/10) and the junior group (classes 7/8). And our version of computational thinking does not involve any programming. So this is not an early entry to Java or C! The juniors are super enthusiastic while the seniors are very curious.

The curriculum is updated to include more Aritificial Intelligence this year with Ravi Kiran as the coordinator. IIIT-H is also working on taking this in the coming years to a few Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas and Telangana government schools.

You can see Prof Jayanthi Sivawamy explaining the vision and Ravi Kiran talking about this edition. Ravi was an undergraduate at the institute not too long ago; it’s doubly satisfying for a young institution to see the loop getting closed!