The global campaign “Hour of Code” was held in over 180 countries of the world from 4 to 10 December 2017. “Hour of Code” provides opportunity to each students to show their ability and receive basic knowledge in the IT sphere and programming, as well as determine their future profession.

This year, the campaign was held in Uzbekistan for the first time. The campaign was organized by Inha University in Tashkent at support of Microsoft Corporation, UNDP Country Office in Uzbekistan and Codecraft.

Students of Inha University in Tashkent held three sessions on coding based of special program Hero`s Journey, produced by Microsoft based on popular game Minecraft.

Engineers of Microsoft Corporation prepared the programme to help children to study programing in easy and attractive forms during school or class events, or at home.

During an hour, all participants passed several levels of Hero`s Journey and received special certificates and stickers with Minecraft heroes.

IUT Rector Sarvar Babakhodjaev commented: “We are happy that we were able to conduct “Hour of Code” campaign. We understand that it is important to improve technological literacy of children and attract them to interesting programming world. The campaign attracted great interest of children and some of them did not want to their homes.”

“With help of such campaigns, we will be able to inculcate love for information technologies, including programming. This, in turn, will encourage children to study in depth the various programming languages and in the future they will be able to contribute to development of the IT industry in Uzbekistan,” the rector added.”

Shirin Abdullaeva, students of the fifth grade, underlined: “I did have no idea that it is possible to code in Minecraft. It is cool and easy to manage.”

“I liked that I was able to pass all levels. I will make my own game about super heroes when I grow up,” Nurmuhammad Nurimov said.

Farhod Pulatov, former teacher on informatics, also was interested in master class as his daughter. He was impressed with untraditional approach to the lesson.

“Minecraft educational program is future of education! Non-traditional way of education in the form game attracts interest of children and they are fully focused on lesson. The children are involved in the process, not frightening them away, and then they grasp everything themselves – this is the real process of education,” he noted.