Among the winning projects of this year’s ‘Public Budget’ competition, the initiative of the Polytechnics’ on building up a free school of Microelectronics for children as part of the ‘Igor Sikorsky KPI’ stands out of the crowd. Schoolchildren all over Kyiv will be able to study the basics of electronics, the development of microprocessors, robotics, microcomputer programming and 3D printing. The project initiator is Ph.D., Associate Professor of the Department of Computer Equipment Engineering Yevhen Vasilievich Korotky. He is talking about the origin of his idea and conditions for developing of an educational environment for children.
Conditions
The idea of creating a school of Microelectronics ‘Lampa Kids’ for children appeared as the development of the open Electronic Lab ‘Lamp’ – a common project of the Scientific and Technical Library of Igor Sikorsky KPI and the Department of Computer Equipment Engineering. The project initiator believes that in order to develop innovations and high technologies in Ukrainian universities, it is principally necessary to engage in the promotion of engineering and to create the welcoming environment, as well as to improve the curriculum to the international standards, to prepare a lot of highly skilled professionals, to attract the best of them to scientific research and teaching professions.
It is necessary to create supportive environment for graduates, so that they stayed at the university and promoted its development instead of working abroad. The first constituent of such conditions is the availability of comfortable and modern workplaces and the advanced equipment. The second, but not least important constituent is the ability to engage students in highly paid engineering projects within the walls of the university, gaining unique experience at the same time. The easiest way to begin with outsourcing Transmittal of these engineering projects for foreign companies is the easiest way to begin with. And then, having received the qualification and reputation, go to the realization of their own innovative developments.
The open Electronic Lab ‘Lamp’ solves the problem of building up the infrastructure required for self-study and work on engineering projects with free Internet access to all сoncerned, for students, postgraduates and teachers of the ‘Igor Sikrosky KPI’ particularly. The laboratory is equipped with a large number of high-tech electronic equipment. These are high-energy power supplies, microprocessor boards, programmed logic microcircuits for creating their own processors, highly-accurate measuring tools from Keysight and Tektronix, and the world's best DLP / FDM 3D printers. Electronic boards were obtained through participation in university programs of foreign microelectronic companies as Altera, Texas Instruments, MIPS, Intel and ARM. In this regard, it was necessary to submit a substantiated declaration and to receive electronic debug module, which come at a price, in a few weeks. Despite the lightness of the procedure, most Ukrainian teachers almost do not use such a great opportunity. Highly-accurate measuring tools and modern 3D printers have been purchased for the laboratory at the price of 740,000 hryvnas won in the ‘Public Budget 2017’ competition. For the record, it became possible only through the support of the ‘Igor Sikorsky KPI’ commune.
After developing the welcoming environment in the "Lamp" laboratory, it was decided to further develop educational initiatives. So the idea of the school of Microelectronics "Lampa Kids" for children emerged.
Knowledge for kids
Simplifying and cheapening of engineering environment and diagnostics testing has made the study of modern electronics publicly available. Schools of Electronics and Robotics for children began to appear in a large scale in Ukraine, which caused a considerable demand among pupils and their parents. Unfortunately, greater part of institutions alike is with a commercial basis, which makes it impossible for children from poor families to access. Intricate and topical subjects, such as the microprocessors development, are not studied due to the lack of teachers of the appropriate qualifications and the necessary equipment. According to the disadvantages of the following situations, it was decided to create a free school of Microelectronics for children as a part of ‘Igor Sikorsky KPI’, where children could study the basics of electronics, the development of microprocessors, microcomputer programming, 3D printing, robotics, Internet and speech processing for free on modern equipment and under the guidance of professional teachers.
Participation in the competition
Having experience of participating in such competitions, our team has submitted the ‘Lampa Kids’ project to the ‘Public Budget 2018’ and managed to win 2 million hryvnas for the purchase of furniture and up-to-date equipment for a future school in a tense struggle. In general, the five projects from the ‘Igor Sikorsky KPI’ won, including ours. Hundreds of volunteers worked for the victory, mostly among the students who were all business, postponing all other cases during several insensitive weeks. They walked around the academic buildings and dormitories time and again, telling teachers and students about KPI projects, put all the Polytechs on their toes, broke the keyboards, typing numerous letters asking for support to their friends, but lined up more than three thousand votes for each of the projects. Deep gratitude to all involved!
Hiring teachers
Although equipment for the school of Microelectronics ‘Lampa Kids’ will be purchased at the expense of the budget of Kiev, ‘Igor Sikorsky KPI’ will also join the project. The school will be located in the auditorium № 125 FEL, nearby the underground and light railway stations. This is a bright and spacious room with an area of 110 square meters. A magnificent view from the windows opens on the ‘Polyana’ square. The administration of Kyiv Polytechnic has already allocated money for modern renovation of the premises, and repairs will begin day by day. After the completion of the repair, it is planned to purchase equipment, prepare the necessary materials and, starting from September 1, 2018, to start working with pupils.
The best teachers of our university with experience in modern engineering companies will be involved in the preparation of educational materials and further work with children. The core of the FEL teachers has already been formed, but interested teachers and other departments are invited to participate. The curator of the project on the part of the city administration is the Kiev branch of the Small Academy of Sciences (MA). A meeting was held with the heads of the National Academy of Sciences, who expressed their interest in the prompt realization of the project. On its part, IAA will help with contacts with educational establishments of Kyiv to attract students to the school of microelectronics and recommendations for creating methodical materials for the children's audience.
Equipment
We are planning to buy excellent quality equipment. These are highly-accurate measuring tools from Keysight, a Tektronix oscilloscope with a bandwidth of up to 1 GHz and a multichannel analyzer up to 3 GHz, high-energy and high-quality power supplies, Intel FPGA programmed logic microcircuits for creating processors and digital microcircuits, microcomputers, Lego Mindstorms kits for studying robotics, 3D printers, SDR systems ETTUS B210 for receiving and generating any radio signals virtually and, of course, personal computers. The premises will have 10 stationary workplaces and a lecture area for 50 people.
How the school works
‘Lampa Kids’ will work in several areas. In the morning, students of ‘Igor Sikorsky KPI’ will have the opportunity to carry out laboratory work on high-tech equipment of the school. On a first-priority basis, this will be the students of teachers involved in working with children, as well as undergraduates, who will use modern equipment to conduct research.
In the afternoon, university teachers will hold classes with children. They will learn not only the processor programming, but also the basic principles of their development. For this purpose, practical classes are planned on programmed logic microcircuits using the Verilog hardware description language and logical synthesis in accordance with the practices of Apple, Samsung, Stanford and MIT. Currently, Ukraine does not have similar children's educational programs for microcircuit designing, which makes the initiative unique.
In addition to designing processors, it is planned to study in innovative areas, including robotics, 3D printing, Internet things and radio signal processing on SDR modules. In each of the directions, we plan to recruit a group of 10-15 children a month. We will create a possibility of preliminary electronic registration for each monthly training course and provide for the sending of letters with a reminder about the beginning. Priority for selection will be given to children from low-income families, winners of competitions and children of ATO participants. If there are a large number of people, the number of training groups can be increased.
The participants of the Junior Academy of Sciences will be able to freely work on scientific projects on the equipment "Lampa Kids". The Doors Open Day will be organized several times a month so that all people concerned can join the work with high-tech devices. The project budget involves the purchase of a high-quality camera, so we can record video lectures and provide free access to the future Youtube channel. Laboratory assistants will keep things tidy. It is also planned to provide 24-hour video surveillance.
Prior experience working with children
Readers are likely to have the question: is it possible that students successfully study of microprocessors and digital microcircuits designing? Seeing that, these topics are not always sufficiently and highly-qualified complete, even in many domestic universities. It turns out that even the laboratory of "Lamp" team made sure of this in their own experience. In the spring of 2017 teachers of Igor Sikorsky KPI and the Taras Shevchenko KNU along with partners from the Silicon Valley - MIPS Technologies organized and conducted the first in Ukraine children's school on Microelectronics. During the week in the Belka Open space of the Scientific and Technical Library, 50 students were studing the basics of electronics, the construction of digital circuits with the use of programmed logic and hardware description language (on the photo). Lectures were given by lecturers and professional developers of microprocessors from the company MIPS Technologies, in particular the well-known philanthropist and popularizer of microelectronics Yuri Panchul. Students volunteering from the department of computer-assisted designing helped to carry out practical work for pupils. Upon completion of the training, school graduates took part in the hackathon for the development of digital chips, where successfully applied knowledge gained in practice. The winning projects, namely the code lock and the traffic lights with a sound indication, were implemented in the Verilog language in programmable logic chips by 9-10-grade students.
Our future plans
Consequently, practical experience convincingly proves that even complex modern technologies can be readily available and explained in simple terms along with the skilled teachers and proper learning material .In "Lampa Kids" it is planned to partially use already existing presentations and practical tasks, tested on the past school of microelectronics. Some of the materials will be translated from English. For example, there are excellent English-language guidance on robotics based on Lego Mindstorms. And in the UK, the unsurpassed educational resources for studying students of microprocessor systems using BBC Microbit have been prepared. Some teaching materials will have to be developed from scratch, in particular lectures and practical tasks for processing radio signals on SDR modules.
Taking all things together, the Lampa Kids team is warrant that the project will be successful, as we have a unique experience in conducting such events and a number of partners from universities and companies. This idea realization will allow students to study high technologies free of charge, attract the best entrants to Kyiv Polytechnic, prepare worthy representatives of Ukraine for international Olympiads on robotics and form a new generation of engineers who will develop their own iPhones in Ukraine.
