Ninth edition of the Developer Week x Soluta project: Promoting IT culture among young people

This year for the ninth consecutive year Soluta is organizing the Developer Week, at the Istituto Tecnico Superiore Corni. Soluta has long been involved in activities aimed at young people and students to promote IT culture. The DW represents a recurrent and structured activity in the PCTO (Pathways for Transversal Skills and for Guidance) area.

DW develops in two stages:

1. Design week: this takes place during address hours and has the objective of imagining and planning the final project, with a working methodology. Kids must present ideas and hypotheses that often evolve throughout the week.

2. Software Development Week: During this phase, students (in the mornings they are at school and in the afternoons they work from home) focus solely on programming a software project for the entire duration of the school day.

This activity represents a double novelty for students, accustomed to writing only a few lines of code sporadically: here they find themselves creating a real software project.

Goals of the Developer Week

Developer Week has multiple training objectives:

• Experiential learning: Theory is reinforced by practical experience, which allows certain aspects to be better understood. The DW creates the opportunity to practice everything learned in the classroom, offering a unique experience that is difficult to replicate in the classroom.

• Group work: the DW project is designed for a workload to be divided into a group, so it is impossible to work alone; this stimulates inclusiveness even where peer relationships could be problematic.

• Time management: the DW project requires continuous planning. This lasts for days of work, and so it is not possible to procrastinate: progress occurs gradually, culminating in final delivery on the last day. The methodologies taught both in theory and in practice lead to continuous planning, called Sprint.

• Self-management: DW develops core soft skills, such as autonomy in work and the ability to solve practical problems, empowering students.

Agile technology and methodology

During DW students develop software to interact with a Digital Twin, a digital twin that simulates a real physical system or process. Paolo Torricelli, the contact person who supervises and guides, lets students independently face the challenges related to writing software. In this context, the software must communicate with other software to make “move” and simulate other actions: the challenge is not towards a person, but towards a machine.

The DW is also a competition with a final ranking and a symbolic prize that further stimulates engagement. The DW format is inspired by the Agile methodology, with three sprints set for Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday morning and an external guide who supervises and requests daily updates on the project (in this case, in fact, Paolo Torricelli). The role of the external trainer represents something new for children, accustomed to having a long relationship with teachers.

An inclusive and replicable activity

This activity is organized during the internship periods of older students, so that the workshops are free. Soluta is available free of charge to promote IT culture among young people and offer them concrete learning opportunities.

This format is easily replicable, has a reasonable duration and requires the active involvement of professors. With our contribution in terms of technology, format and guidance, we offer students a concrete experience of software development. and a relapse of the medium to long term, on all subjects.

The Developer Week, in addition to being a training project, is a springboard towards a more aware and innovative digital culture, where the skills acquired go beyond traditional school theory, to “learn to learn” and start developing problem solving.