In robotics classes, Armenian teens dream of going high-tech in future
YEREVAN, Armenia: In a sleek classroom in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, one of the poorest post-Soviet republics, 14-year-old Nazeli Ter-Petrosyan peers at the screen of her Apple Mac.
During a computer programming course offered at the high-tech Tumo school, TerPetrosyan and her classmates learn how to digitise medieval texts.
“I’m developing a programme to enable artificial intelligence to read old manuscripts,” said the teen.
Her computer screen features a page from a 15th century Bible held at Armenia’s famed repository of ancient writings, the Matenadaran.
Armenia, which is known for its rich history and troubled past, has grappled with poverty, unemployment and a brain drain since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
But despite a stagnant economy, Armenia’s tech sector has been booming over the past decade, boosting hopes that one day the resource-poor country can become a global IT powerhouse.
Tumo is a cutting edge, afterschool learning centre, where around 7,000 Armenians aged 12 to 18, from all walks of life, study for free.
“We are working on projects that we will be able to later use in our everyday life,” said Davit Harutyunyan, 14, as he showed off a half-assembled robot.
The South Caucasus country of three million people boasts a vibrant startup scene and its tech workers have been a driving force behind a wave of peaceful protests that ousted the old elite from power in 2018.
Tumo aims to raise the next generation of tech professionals and play a role in creating a knowledge-based economy in a country where 30 per cent of the population live in poverty.
“We’ve got very ambitious plans,” chief development officer Pegor Papazian told AFP.
“We want to become one of the world’s most competitive labour markets,” added Papazian, who holds a master’s degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States. Inside the futuristic, openplan premises, mobile computer workstations allow students to move around freely.
“In Armenia what Tumo offers is extraordinary,” Julian SeftonGreen, a professor of new media education at Deakin University, in the Australian city of Melbourne, told AFP in emailed comments.
Tumo offers “a particular vision of a techno future,” said SeftonGreen, who visited the school and studied its educational model.
On average, students spend two to three years at the centre. They create their own learning plans and are assisted by instructors, many of whom come from companies such as Google and Pixar.
There are no grades and, at the end of their studies, students receive digital portfolios showcasing their work. — AFP