On November 27th, 2018, a group of YSUIB representatives, assistant to the director A. Yeganyan, M. Zakaryan, acting dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, A. Margaryan, acting dean of the Faculty of Applied Arts, and seven students, visited the Dilijan Central School and Fab Lab (fabrication laboratory, “intelligent” laboratory), equipped with innovative technologies that enables to create “almost everything” from “almost nothing”.
The university representatives walked around Dilijan central school classrooms, equipped with modern technology, got acquainted with the history, mission and problems of the school.
It was presented that in 2013, Ayb Educational Foundation, in partnership with the Central Bank of Armenia, opened Dilijan central school, which belongs to the Ayb School and the first school project implemented by Ayb external order and funding. It is a model of a city school, accessible not only to employees of the CBA, but also to other children from Dilijan. The central school is a primary school, with its elemental and secondary components. The school’s ideology, physical environment and educational content (namely, student curricula, including psychologist and logopedist curricula, teaching methodology, teacher and student admission policy, evaluation criteria, etc.) are designed according to Ayb standards.
It was emphasized that the mission of the school was to become an environment for a full and competitive education and upbringing by creating a generation that has strong spiritual values, virtue, high aesthetic taste and aspiration for a healthy lifestyle.
In its first year of activity, the Dilijan Central School had an impact on several related areas: educational, cultural, social, community-based. The school regularly organizes community-based initiatives and cooperation with other Dilijan schools.
The next stop of the Branch representatives was the Dilijan Fab Lab, where students got acquainted with the activities of the “smart” laboratory, witnessed the processes at that very moment, the 3D modeling, the woodworking device, and the modeling of unmanned aerial vehicles projected by children.
The university representatives also got acquainted with the activities of the Dilijan Fab Lab, presented its purpose, mission, trainings and so on.
In particular, it was presented that, in 2015, The Central Bank of Armenia established the first regional Fab Lab in Dilijan, a platform for technical prototyping for innovation and inventions and promotes local entrepreneurship. It is also an innovative and educational environment for creating, learning, and teaching.
The Dilijan Fab Lab aims at providing residents of Tavush with appropriate means and environment, which will enable the development of creative thinking, science and engineering.
Its mission is to:
- Form a creative community
- Promote interest towards design and projecting
- Encourage ideas, projects, knowledge, equipment and resource sharing within the community
- Provide an opportunity for new knowledge acquisition
- Encourage innovative entrepreneurship among young people of the region
In order to encourage interest in innovation, the following training courses are being held in Dilijan Fab Lab:
- Programming training course, during which students learn about microcontroller programming (age group 15 and more)
- Game making and robot collection, programming training course for children aged 8-13, during which they learn how to make games through Scratch. After the program training, they learn the robot collection and programming through the Vex constructor
- During the “Basics of Electronics” training course, students learn to design analogue, digital and combined systems, power electronics systems, power electronics basics, Altium PCB design (for age group 15 and more)
- The basics of telecommunications and mechanics (age group 15 and more)
- Design and modeling (Autocad, Solidworks, Fusion, Corel Draw)
- Design and preparation of unmanned aerial vehicles for teenagers
- The Basics of architecture (age group 15 and more)
- RF and synthesis for the most advanced students
- Project management, product development, entrepreneurship, intellectual property and other trainings.
