FORUM SYNOPSIS:
Youth Center for Creative Technologies
Birthright Armenia volunteers where guests at the Youth Center for Creative Technologies on June 28th 2007.
The speaker, Marie Lou Papazian, greeted the participants at the main entrance. She is the Director of the Youth Center for Creative Technologies. Previously, she led the Education for Development (E4D) Institute’s web based education project linking students in more than 30 schools in Armenia with their peers in 12 other countries in weekly collaborative activities. Ms. Papazian has been a member of the Armenian Information Technology Council since 2000 and holds a Master of Science degree in Education Technology from the Columbia University Teachers College.
Ms. Papazian started off by outlining the projects envisioned for the Center. Being an initiative of American-Armenian IT entrepreneur Sam Simonian, the Center is being built give thousands of young Armenians a learning environment for digital media creation, game development, animation and related skills. The main target group of the center is children from 12-17 who can come to the Center and use its opportunities after school.
The first floor of the center is considered to be an open space equipped with a vast network of freely accessible, internet enabled computers. Besides the computers the first floor will also have some space for exhibitions, large screen projections and different stations featuring the latest developments in IT world.
The Open Space will include different educational programs through which the children will be able to get prepared for the next “level” that will lead them to the second floor. That floor will be open to those children who have the motivation and talent to explore their potential in the IT sector.
Besides the building itself there is a large big park, the territory of which is rented by the center to preserve it, and to show the connection of nature and science to the children.
According to Ms Papazian the price of this project is over $20.000.000. The Center is slated for inauguration in February 2008.
