Advancing computing education globally

As a part of the partnership between Oracle Academy and the Ministry of Education in Sri Lanka, 18 educators from institutions across Sri Lanka attended training in Database Design & Programming Using SQL.  The faculty will take their new skills acquired by studying and practicing the Oracle Academy curriculum back to their institutions and their students across various computer science courses. These faculty also previously had attended similar training in Java Fundamentals and Database Foundations provided by Oracle Academy earlier in 2018. The faculty were awarded certificates of completion from Mr. P.N. Illapperuma, Director of Education, Information & Communication Technology at the Ministry of Education, Sri Lanka, and Assistant Director Vasana Edirisuriya, both of whom have been key facilitators in bringing the Oracle Academy program to Sri Lanka’s schools and higher education colleges and universities. Not yet a member of Oracle Academy? To take advantage of free Oracle Academy computing education curriculum and resources, learn more about joining Oracle Academy as an Institutional member.

As a part of the partnership between Oracle Academy and the Ministry of Education in Sri Lanka, 18 educators from institutions across Sri Lanka attended training in Database Design & Programming Using...

During a U.S. Presidential State visit by Barack Obama to Vietnam in 2016, Oracle Academy was recognized by President Barack Obama for its collaboration with USAID and Arizona State University to advance computer science education in Vietnamese universities. Oracle Academy is an integral partner in the Building University-Industry Learning and Development through Innovation and Technology (BUILD-IT) Alliance in Vietnam. This video shows how our collaboration is enriching computer science education at six Vietnamese universities. The BUILD-IT Alliance is a public-private ecosystem implemented by USAID and Arizona State University to prepare Vietnamese engineering graduates with work-ready skills. Through partnerships with Oracle Academy and Vietnamese universities, BUILD-IT partners are building high-quality and in-demand academic programs in Vietnamese computer science and STEM education fields. BUILD-IT’s partnerships and programs leverage their shared capacity to foster curricular innovation, quality assurance recognition, and leadership development in Vietnam’s leading technology and engineering universities. “This partnership with Oracle Academy demonstrates the impact of industry-government-academia coming together around a common interest to closely collaborate, leveraging people and resources to create local impact,” said Jeffrey S. Goss, Associate Vice Provost for Arizona State University. To support BUILD-IT’s partner universities, Oracle Academy provides a complete portfolio of software, curriculum, hosted technology, faculty training, and certification resources to these educational institutions. Faculty can flexibly insert Oracle Academy’s teaching resources into their computer science, statistics, and business programs, ensuring that students gain industry-relevant technical skills before graduation. Since 2016, Oracle Academy and BUILD-IT continue to support six leading universities to integrate Oracle Academy resources into their computer science curricula. As of February 2019, Oracle Academy and BUILD-IT have delivered six faculty training programs for 200 participants. Once the faculty complete the training, they are ready to insert Oracle Academy’s iLearning resources into their programs and provide their students with the skills they’ll need for their high tech careers. To update the faculties’ skills, Oracle Academy offers multi-day online and in person train-the-trainer programs in Java Programming, Database Design, Database Programming, and Application Development. To further support the education sector in Vietnam, Oracle Academy is sponsoring the upcoming STEMCON Conference in DaNang, which is an annual conference convening 300 leading stakeholders in Vietnamese technology education development. Oracle Academy will join STEMCON 2019 as a distinguished panelist and partner. Watch the new video on the BUILD-IT project.

During a U.S. Presidential State visit by Barack Obama to Vietnam in 2016, Oracle Academy was recognized by President Barack Obama for its collaboration with USAID and Arizona State University to...

It’s been a busy time in Croatia for Oracle Academy. We recently took part in two events in the country, engaging both students and educators in enhancing their technology knowledge and skills. Winter School of Informatics Held in Krapina for Students First, we participated in the Winter School of Informatics, Krapina, held in the northwestern region of Hrvatsko Zagorje. This is one of the largest K-12 programming events in the country, and ran from January 3-12, 2019, hosting more than 200 participants during the school winter break. Students from all around Croatia were invited to join the event by the Croatian Computer Science Association, the Krapina Informatics Club, and the Secondary School Krapina. Students attended programming workshops to prepare for upcoming programming contests that will culminate in March 2019 at the national programming competition finals, with selection of the team that will represent Croatia at the upcoming International Olympiad of Informatics. The Secondary School Krapina, an Oracle Academy member since 2015, hosted a program that included Java workshops on the Alice platform and database SQL. The Oracle Academy Country Manager for Croatia, Darko Jureković, attended the evetn’s opening ceremony, along with representatives of the government, the county, the city of Krapina, and the organizers. Jureković spoke to the group about trends in IT industry and their impact on the labor market in the region. He noted there is a shortage of IT professionals at both the national and international level. Events like this that attract large number of pupils from both primary and secondary schools are an important contribution to bridging that tech skills gap and rightfully deserve both recognition and support. We are thankful to the organizers, notably the principal of the Secondary School Krapina, Mr. Ivica Rozijan, and president of the Krapina Informatics Club, Mr. Stjepan Šalković, for their kind invitation to participate in this engaging event. Read more about this event (mostly in Croatian language) and view photos using the links below, provided by the event organizers as well as the local government and media:   http://krik-kr.hr/galerije-slika/127-zimska-skola-2019 https://www.facebook.com/krapinazsi2019/ http://www.kzz.hr/zimska-skola-otvorenje-2019 http://www.ss-krapina.skole.hr/?news_hk=1&news_id=2060&mshow=2792#mod_news Oracle Academy Joins Educator Webinars Organized by Ministry of Science and Education  Recently, the Croatia Ministry of Science and Education undertook major educational reform in the country. For the first time, informatics, covering computer science and information technologies, became a compulsory subject in grades 5 and 6 in primary schools as well as in secondary schools throughout the country. This new requirement will help ensure the country’s youth will have the opportunity to obtain knowledge and skills that can help them be the tech leaders and innovators of the future, obtain rewarding careers, and help Croatia continue to grow a skilled workforce.  To prepare teachers for this major change, the Ministry has been organizing professional development activities for some 1,300 teachers, including webinars that run on a platform provided by Croatian Academic and Research Network (CARNet). These activities welcome industry experts to contribute and participate. In support of Oracle Academy’s partnership with the Ministry on computing initiatives since 2015, Oracle and other professionals prepared a series of 10 webinars covering topics ranging from Java programming to Big Data, Autonomous Database, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Blockchain. Presenters included experts from Oracle, major Oracle partners in Croatia, and professional associations such as the Croatian Associations of Java Users (HUJAK). The introductory webinar in this series was held on January 18, 2019, with a presentation by Oracle Academy Country Manager for Croatia, Darko Jureković, to nearly 500 teachers from across the country. The next webinar was held on January 24 on Java programming. Each webinar is announced by the Ministry on its website (in Croatian).

It’s been a busy time in Croatia for Oracle Academy. We recently took part in two events in the country, engaging both students and educators in enhancing their technology knowledge and skills. Winter...

Oracle Academy has signed a partnership agreement with the Ministry of National Education, Technical and Vocational Training (MENET-FP) of Côte d'Ivoire to advance computing education throughout the Ivory Coast. The aim is to bring computing curriculum to 450 schools, reaching 450,000 students over the next three years. Côte d'Ivoire is committed to strengthening the link between the world of work and school through entrepreneurial education with a focus on information and communication technology (ICT) fields. The agreement, signed on February 5, 2019, will begin implementing Oracle Academy curriculum into schools throughout the country during the 2018-2019 school year. Madame Kandia Camara, the Minister of MENET-FP, said, “In this vast project, we have at our side Oracle Academy, which allows our children to dream in…science and technology in order to provoke in them the trigger to create a useful trend in STEAM.” Through the agreement, MENET-FP will help build a society where science and technology literacy helps students get hands-on skills with the goal of obtaining rewarding careers. It aims to promote the teaching of computer science and technology in all schools in Côte d'Ivoire, and encourage more young people, especially girls, to pursue STEM-related careers. “ICT plays a significant role in our everyday lives. Through today’s agreement, Oracle Academy can help empower our youth, as well as provide a platform for our future leaders to be equipped with both the technological and critical skills that can enable social and economic growth of our country,” noted Annick Sakho, Country Managing Director, Oracle Cote d’Ivoire. The Director of Technologies and Computer Systems (DTSI), Aboubacar Coulibaly, whose department is hosting the project, said, “This agreement will reach 450 public and private high schools throughout the national territory, and will train 360 teachers and more than 450,000 students on computer science and related subjects.”  Over three years, Oracle Academy will facilitate "Train-the-Trainer courses to prepare teachers and faculty members as instructors for the following Oracle Academy courses: Database Foundations Java Foundations Java Fundamentals Students will have the opportunity to acquire 21st century skills such as critical thinking, analysis, curiosity, communication and collaboration, and complex problem-solving. This partnership continues Oracle’s 25-year legacy in education. At Oracle Academy, we believe everyone should have the skills and opportunities to achieve their dreams. We’re thrilled to team with MENET-FP in a shared mission to advance computer science education throughout Cote d’Ivoire, and prepare students in the era of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, the Internet of Things, and beyond. http://www.education.gouv.ci/dtsi-signature-dun-accord-de-partenariat-entre-le-ministere-de-leducation-nationale-de-lenseignement-technique-et-de-la-formation-professionnelle-menet-fp-et-oracle-academy-pou/  

Oracle Academy has signed a partnership agreement with the Ministry of National Education, Technical and Vocational Training (MENET-FP) of Côte d'Ivoire to advance computing education throughout the...

During the last semester of 2018, Oracle Academy Brazil, in collaboration with Oracle Volunteering and Corporate Citizenship, mentored more than 80 graduate students of SENAC – Servico Nacional de Aprendizagem Comercial. Ten Oracle Volunteers supported six classes of students in delivering integrated projects centered on computer engineering and digital gaming. In addition to providing technical feedback and project quotes, the volunteers presented on specific topics such as artificial intelligence, and helped the students come up with solid, realistic IT solutions for their projects. The results were impressive! One Oracle Volunteer, Ricardo Kobara, Field Support Engineer, Global IT, stated, “SENAC students are really prepared to enter the labor market. The part that I enjoyed most was inspiring them to continue building their knowledge base, and giving them the confidence to transform their project ideas into real business cases.” Another mentor, Breno Comin, Alliances Consultant, agreed: “The overall experience of supporting these students on their practical projects was very interesting and engaging. Our goal was to guide the students, but we found that they already knew a lot about technology and could discuss concepts in a very detailed way. I had a great time!” The students were also excited to connect with these Oracle experts. Rafael Tejii Tengan, a computer engineering student, said, “I am sure that all my colleagues were very motivated to be mentored by employees of a technology company like Oracle. One of our mentors, Jacques Bretas, Sales Representative OD Prime for Oracle, helped us better structure our ideas, which was especially helpful given that we only had 3 to 4 months to complete this project. We could see how excited he was about the projects and results.” Professor Sergio Nascimento, Graduation Director of SENAC, said, “This was a great opportunity to give the students exposure to high-level professionals from the IT industry, creating a bridge between academia and industry. We would like to thank Oracle and the group of volunteers for supporting this program. The students loved the experience, and we hope to make it available to future classes, as well.” Oracle Academy celebrated the successful conclusion of this first cycle of the program by giving the students participation certificates, which they were happy to include in their resumes. We appreciate Oracle Volunteers collaborating with us on this important initiative, which provided full engagement and support to an Oracle Academy Institutional Member, increasing the quality of our relationship and helping us advance computer science globally. Interested in programs such as this through an Oracle Academy Institutional Membership? Learn more.

During the last semester of 2018, Oracle Academy Brazil, in collaboration with Oracle Volunteering and Corporate Citizenship, mentored more than 80 graduate students of SENAC – Servico Nacional de...

With the goal of providing a full overview of Oracle Academy Java and database curriculum, on January 13 – 14 we had the pleasure of hosting an Oracle Academy round-table with faculty from some or our key university Institutional Members in the new Oracle office in Amman, Jordan. The event was attended by faculty and deans from Jordanian universities, all long-term and active members of the Oracle Academy program, alongside representatives from our partners the Public Sector Directorate (PSD) of Jordan: Al Hussein Technical University American University of Madaba Applied Science Private University Hashemite University Irbid National University Princess Sumaya University for Technology Yarmouk University  Ola Ramadan, the Oracle Academy Program Manager for the Middle East and North Africa, delivered a briefing on the key membership benefits of the Oracle Academy program. We also were delighted to have with us Willie McCabe, Oracle Academy Global Director, Member Education and Curriculum Development, who spent time providing a detailed overview of Oracle Academy Java and database curriculum and demonstrating the key functions of Oracle Application Express (APEX).   For newer members, this review also provided an opportunity to demonstrate how to use the Oracle Academy iLearning system to deliver curriculum in the classroom, and how to set up accounts for their students.   In association with Raed Hajarat, Oracle Country Leader for Jordan, and his team, further sessions for the academics were delivered by the local business team. They covered technology topics including the Oracle Autonomous Database and trending innovative technologies, and conducted a hands-on workshop on big data and advanced analytics.   We thank Raed and our colleagues in Jordan for their continued support to ensure our members get the best use of their Oracle Academy memberships. Not an Oracle Academy Institutional Member yet? Learn more here and take advantage of all the benefits for your institution, yourself and your students.

With the goal of providing a full overview of Oracle Academy Java and database curriculum, on January 13 – 14 we had the pleasure of hosting an Oracle Academy round-table with faculty from some or our...

In July 2018, we welcomed about 40 students from ETEC de Guaianazes and Parameters College at the Paula Souza Center Programming Marathon Winners Awards. The Programming Marathon is an event aimed at students of the technical courses of the Center Paula Souza (Etecs), which offers programs for solving problems under pressure to help students learn and work in teams. The students need to solve in a given time the largest number of available questions, released at the beginning of the competition. They use computers, printed materials, a lot of will power, imagination, and creativity in their battle against the clock. The group that solves the greatest number of problems in the shortest possible time, using Java programming languages, wins. This was the third Programming Marathon held, with 137 teams totaling approximately 400 students from the ETIM and Technical Center Paula Souza participating. Making this marathon possible were 33 teachers working with the students in units, and a team of 12 judges. The winning teams were all from Guaianzes ETEC, and used Java programming in all their developed solutions. To welcome the student awardees, Oracle experts Leonardo Veri, technology and innovation consultant, Paulo Simões, solutions engineer, Pablo de Freitas, Innovation Lab leader, and Fabiana Valente, Oracle Academy Brazil country manager, hosted a conversation with the students about the digital revolution, technology trends, and IT careers. They also conducted a fun programming workshop for the students using the Finch robot. Teacher Carlos Eduardo Ribeiro, coordinator of information technology projects for CETEC Capacitations, said, “The rewards for winners of the the Programming Marathon between the ETECs of the Paula Souza Center could not be better. The winning team from Etec Guianazes (Guaianazes - SP) was awarded an unparalleled day at Oracle Brazil at its headquarters in São Paulo, full of technology, relaxation, hands-on fun, and a chat with professionals from different areas of Oracle , who welcomed us warmly. This type of event promotes the company as approachable for the students. It is very important to establish the concepts and the guidelines that we teach in the classroom in the real world, showing the students that we are on the right path. We use methodologies such as the marathon, hackathons and robotics to impel learning and promote the students’ involvement in the teaching and learning process, so they becoming active agents in building their knowledge and problem analysis skills.” He emphasized that the euphoric state of the students, which is contagious when they share their experiences with the school community, is “priceless”. Ribeiro appreciated the Oracle team hosting the students. Learn more here (in Portuguese).

In July 2018, we welcomed about 40 students from ETEC de Guaianazes and Parameters College at the Paula Souza Center Programming Marathon Winners Awards. The Programming Marathon is an event aimed at...

What more engaging way to introduce students to object-oriented programming than through the innovative Alice platform? More than 120 educators enrolled to attend a free webcast, Oracle Academy Presents: Get Your Students Started in Programming Using Alice, on January 9, 2018. Alice is an innovative block-based educational Java programming environment, developed at Carnegie Mellon University, that makes it easy to create 3D animations, build interactive narratives, or program simple games. Based on the Lewis Carroll characters from the books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Alice motivates learning through creative exploration and teaches logical and computational thinking skills and fundamental principles of programming. It can be used to teach object-oriented programming to students of all ages. The webcast offered a live demo of Alice world, sample projects, and information about fun ways to use Alice to get students started in object-oriented programming, and directed attendees to free Oracle Academy resources using Alice. The webcast was presented by The Alice Project director and expert Eric Brown. Brown’s previous work includes co-founding ImpactGames to influence society and promote change through interactive media. Toward this end, ImpactGames developed PeaceMaker, a video game simulation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to promote dialogue and understanding. Brown was listed among “100 Social Entrepreneurs Changing the World” in Newsweek Japan. He holds a Masters of Entertainment Technology degree from Carnegie Mellon University and received a BFA in painting with focused studies in education and computer graphics from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. The Oracle Academy workshop Getting Started with Java Using Alice teaches students with little or no programming experience basic Java concepts through development of 3-D animations in Alice 3.1. While it is suitable for all beginning learners, it can be especially engaging for girls. Students have fun creating animated stories and games using objects and characters from a rich gallery of 3-D models. The Alice platform currently is supported in 24 languages, including English, Arabic, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. If you didn’t have a chance to attend, access the webcast here. Learn more about the Oracle Academy workshop Getting Started with Java Using Alice.

What more engaging way to introduce students to object-oriented programming than through the innovative Alice platform? More than 120 educators enrolled to attend a free webcast, Oracle...

On December 6, 2018, Oracle Academy staff were pleased to be part of Oracle Cloud Day in Turkey. The event brought together more than 800 Oracle partners, customers, cloud visionaries, and other thought leaders in Istanbul. It was a great opportunity to display and explore the latest cloud technologies shaping the future of innovation and allowing participants to network with their peers in the industry. During the opening sessions, the Vice President for Oracle Turkey, Levant, Egypt and North Africa, Filiz Dogan, pointed out the key role that Oracle Academy plays in empowering students and teachers of today to support the innovators of tomorrow. In addition, she announced the launch of a special social project starting in January 2019 in collaboration with Oracle Academy, CoderDojo in Turkey, and Oracle Women’s Leadership (OWL). CoderDojo is a volunteer-led, global movement of free coding clubs for young people. Within the scope of the project, Oracle Turkey will host a CoderDojo club at the Oracle office in Istanbul initially for six weeks. Each week, Oracle Volunteers will deliver a two-hour coding workshop to disadvantaged students ages 10-15 to help them learn coding and create their own games and videos using Alice, an innovative, block-based programming environment. Oracle Academy staff welcomed participants at our booth in the exhibition area. It was a fantastic opportunity to present Oracle Academy’s computing education resources, including the new course curriculum on artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as the modular Education Bytes to participants from many different parts of the industry, and inform them about our initiatives to support creating digitally skilled students and workers.

On December 6, 2018, Oracle Academy staff were pleased to be part of Oracle Cloud Day in Turkey. The event brought together more than 800 Oracle partners, customers, cloud visionaries, and...

To share information on Java with Italian educators, on December 3, 2018, at Oracle Italia’s new office in Rome, Oracle Academy held a training event and workshop. At the event, the Oracle Academy team shared best practices in teaching computing and conducted training for the Java Foundations course. Teachers who attended this engaging event are members of Oracle Academy Institutional member schools and learned how to teach object-oriented programming. The course, which took place over five days, provided the teachers with skills and knowledge to teach the Oracle Academy curriculum to students in the third or fourth year of study at technical institutes in the technological sector. The course was led by Prof. La Monica Michelangelo, currently a lecturer at The Enrico Mattei Technical Institute of Casamicciola Terme, an institution that has used Oracle Academy curriculum over the last four years within its teaching courses. The Oracle Academy curriculum is offered to all five years of their students at the institute. In addition, the Enrico Mattei Technical Institute currently is taking steps to involve secondary schools in the area in workshops and laboratories aimed at developing computational thinking and to tackle the gender gap in the ICT sector. This Oracle Academy Rome event was the precursor to an additional training event planned for interested educators in March in Oracle Java Programming. These dedicated teachers now are prepared to bring their Java skills and knowledge to their schools and create virtual classes for their students using the Oracle Academy iLearning tool. They are keen to support their students in learning and attaining Oracle Java Foundations certificates to help make them career ready. Learn more about Oracle Academy Java curriculum.    

To share information on Java with Italian educators, on December 3, 2018, at Oracle Italia’s new office in Rome, Oracle Academy held a training event and workshop. At the event, the Oracle...

In October 2018, Oracle Academy offered a webcast exploring NetSuite, led by Charlie Bame-Aldred, co-founder of The Hub of Analytics Education and executive professor of Accounting at Northeastern University, Boston. Used by more than 40,000 organizations, divisions, and subsidiaries around the world, NetSuite is a unified business management solution that provides one-stop access to enterprise resource planning (ERP), eCommerce, customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management (SCM) tools. Educators teaching business courses use NetSuite to teach students modern business operations and financial processes in the cloud. The webcast was targeted to educators teaching business courses such as big data, auditing, or accounting or business analytics. With both NetSuite and NetSuite OneWorld solutions available to educators through Oracle Academy, NetSuite offers an easy alternative to installing and implementing on-premise business applications for teaching and classroom use. This significantly reduces the investment and time needed to incorporate modern business management tools into the classroom. In partnership with Oracle Academy, The Hub of Analytics Education provides educational business data hosted in the NetSuite cloud ERP. In the free webcast, educators teaching accounting and other business courses were able to learn how to use The Hub’s cloud-hosted big dataset in their courses—free. The Hub uses NetSuite to host data for a fictional company called Bibtor LLC. In the webcast, attendees learned more about: Accessing the Bibitor dataset and reading, running reports on, and exporting the data in NetSuite Using the data in conjunction with supplemental materials on The Hub to conduct analytics exercises in the classroom Guiding students in using data to draw conclusions about business operations or make business decisions. NetSuite helps educators prepare students for the business world by building the cloud-based SaaS skills that today’s employers seek. We thank Charlie Bame-Aldred for his work and expertise in leading this valuable webcast, and all the educators who attended. Watch the recorded webcast and learn more about our NetSuite solutions.

In October 2018, Oracle Academy offered a webcast exploring NetSuite, led by Charlie Bame-Aldred, co-founder of The Hub of Analytics Education and executive professor of Accounting at Northeastern...

Since September 2018, Oracle Academy has worked with students from La Unidad Profesional Interdisciplinaria de Ingeniería y Ciencias Sociales y Administrativas (UPIICSA), part of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, in Mexico, in collaboration with Oracle Volunteers and Oracle Corporate Citizenship. This is the first mentoring project in the region for Institutional members of Oracle Academy. The objective of this project is to motivate students to continue their studies so by the end of the sessions, they have a broader picture of the labor market and access to better job opportunities in the technology industry. To achieve this, each student is assigned to an Oracle Volunteer mentor, who guides and shares his or her experience, expertise, and knowledge to help the student succeed in their computing studies and in the labor market. Currently in Mexico, 16 active Oracle Volunteers serve as mentors to 31 computer science engineering students from UPIICSA. Students attended an exciting kickoff meeting and then two mentoring sessions in their facilities, where Oracle Volunteers shared with them information and the necessary tools to have a successful job interview, create an effective resume, main points that a recruiter evaluates, and guidance on how to find their first job. Oracle experts also dedicated their time to prepare several talks on topics such as chatbots and cybersecurity, and provided an Oracle Cloud demo. In addition, the students also received a complete session to discover design thinking and how this can be used to achieve their dreams and objectives. Oracle Academy is constantly developing new approaches with the students and teachers of our strategic Institutional member partners and thus continues to transform education in computer science for institutions, educators and students in Latin America and the Caribbean. Thank you to all the Oracle Volunteers in our subsidiaries in our Oracle office in Mexico who make this project possible.

Since September 2018, Oracle Academy has worked with students from La Unidad Profesional Interdisciplinaria de Ingeniería y Ciencias Sociales y Administrativas (UPIICSA), part of the Instituto...

Oracle Academy recently participated in the first Taiwan Leading Education Expo dedicated to school educators: EDTECH TAIWAN. This new event, which took place in December 2018 in Taipei, was organized by the Taipei Computer Association and Ministry of Science and Technology, and is now Taiwan’s signature education event. The Expo brought together more than 200 exhibitors and over 3,000 Taiwan educators and school leaders. The Expo will provide an annual platform for educators in Taiwan to discover the latest developments in educational resources and learning technology.    Oracle Academy Country Manager in Taiwan, Francine Yang, delivered a session on the Oracle Academy global philanthropic education program, describing how educators may use its free education resources and curriculum to teach students computing at higher education or secondary education institutions. She provided attendees with an opportunity to explore the Oracle Academy offerings that help institutions and educators advance computing science education for their students. We look forward to continuing to share information on Oracle Academy curriculum with institutions and educators in Taiwan. Not yet a member of Oracle Academy? To take advantage of free Oracle Academy computing education curriculum and resources, learn more about joining Oracle Academy as an Instititional member.

Oracle Academy recently participated in the first Taiwan Leading Education Expo dedicated to school educators: EDTECH TAIWAN. This new event, which took place in December 2018 in Taipei, was organized...

On October 20-21, 2018, Oracle and Oracle Academy welcomed 400 students to Oracle Code 4 Kids, a fun hands-on programming event to inspire the next generation of developers and provide students ages 10-16 with the opportunity to learn and practice coding, robotics projects and more. The event was held at Oracle headquarters, Redwood Shores, California, prior to Oracle OpenWorld and Oracle CodeOne. Event keynote speakers included Eric Brown, director of The Alice Project, Carnegie Mellon University, and Dr. Ayodele Thomas, director, Greene Scholars Program, an Oracle Diversity and Inclusion partner. “The energy and enthusiasm of the kids at the event was incredible,” said Brown. “The most inspiring part of the experience for me was the diversity of the attendees. It was truly an inclusive event that promoted the beauty of technology to excite everyone to learn.” The event was sponsored by Oracle Academy. To increase diversity in computing and bring technology opportunities to students who may be disadvantaged, free registration codes were provided to almost half of the attendees, and all paid registration proceeds were donated to SBE and the Greene Scholars Program. Michelle Kovac, director, Oracle Java Marketing and Operations, planned the event. Special thanks to Tyra Crockett, senior manager, Oracle Academy North America, for all her work on the program. “This event was a great example of Oracle’s commitment to the developer community, both current and future developers and innovators like these kids,” said Stephen Chin, director, Developer Marketing, Oracle Groundbreakers Team, and Oracle Code content chair. “This event had great community support and 20 different sessions to appeal to kids of various interests. We’re grateful to educators and parents who continue to encourage kids in developing the tech innovations of the future.” “It was super exciting to see so many kids attend and really get into computer science and programming,” said Crockett. “We’re happy so many of the kids’ teachers and parents support applied computing experience. The sessions were so fun and let the kids get hands-on practice and really see what they could do with just a little instruction—like animate robots, build games, or create circuits. The Finch Robot flash mob dance was one of my favorite parts!” Watch the event video to view some of the exciting projects students worked on. Workshops Covered a Range of Computing Topics Oracle Code 4 Kids offered 14 engaging workshops on the following topics: Alice—An innovative object-oriented programming environment that makes it easy to create animations, build interactive narratives, or program simple games in 3D, Alice is designed to teach logical and computational thinking skills and fundamental principles of programming. ChucK, My Friend for Programming Music—A programming language for real-time sound synthesis and music creation, ChucK offers a unique time-based, concurrent programming model that's precise and expressive; dynamic control rates; and the ability to add and modify code on the fly. This session provided the opportunity to develop a program to create simple compositions in real time, using the basic concepts of programming. Fun with Python Programming and Introduction to Python—Students learned how to write simple and fun programs, input/output statements, and logical conditional statements, and built simple GUI Python games and apps. Students used critical thinking to solve real-world problems, tackling control structures, syntax rules, library accessing, and more. Play Soccer with Lego Mindstorms—These programmable bricks from Lego can be combined with electric motors, transmitters, ultrasonic sensors, and ultraviolet color and light as well as pulleys (such as gears, axles, beams, and hydraulic components) to build robots and other automated or interactive systems. In this fun, creative workshop, students built Lego Mindstorm robots that played soccer, with a match between two teams. Programming the Finch Robot in Greenfoot—In this Oracle Academy interactive session, students learned how to program a small Finch robot using Java in the Greenfoot environment. Each kid had their own robot and created an interface to control its functions, including directional control, light and proximity sensors, sounds, colors, and accelerometers. The session ended with a robot flashmob dance! Space Exploration with Scratch—An interactive and creative exploration of space and computer science with the MIT Scratch language, this session wove together computing and the basics of space technology, teaching students to write programs to solve basic problems using Scratch. The instructor was a former rocket scientist. Squishy Circuits—This hands-on lesson covered the basics of electronics, using Play-Doh to create connections. Participants learned about the difference between conductors and insulators, basic parts for building a circuit, and the path of electricity. Building Your First ReactJS App—For students interested in building their own interactive web app, this class started with a basic HTML website and then incorporated ReactJS to make it interactive, so kids could insert JavaScript into their HTML code. The program was created by Facebook and is used by numerous industry leaders, including Tesla, Twitter, Walmart, Skype, and many more. Coding and Concepts with Java Puzzle Ball—Users of popular languages such as Java, C++, C#, and Python can do object-oriented programming, a staple of computer science education but also is a new way of thinking that can be difficult for learners. The Oracle Java Puzzle Ball builds learners’ understanding of key programming concepts: class design, static versus instance variables, inheritance, and lambda expressions. Introduction to Arduino—In this session, participants were introduced to the Arduino platform, learning what an Arduino development board is, parts that correlate with it, the basics of programming in Arduino C, and practicing projects to become familiar with the interface and electronics. Java Programming for Beginners Using BlueJ—BlueJ, a simple Java platform, lets users implement object-oriented programming concepts, offering visualization and the ability to create objects and interact with them. The session offered applied computer science concepts blended with simple, fun problems to solve so participants easily could start programming in Java. Oracle Academy Arcade—This arcade let kids explore their workshop of choice: Programming an arcade game in Greenfoot, programming the Finch Robot in Greenfoot, or solving a series of crimes using a SQL database. Building and Programming a Robot with Scratch—In this session, participants built an mBot programmable robot and directed it with Scratch to flash lights, play sounds, and move. Game Development with George—Participants learned the basic programming concepts of George such as functions and recursion and applied them to geometry, game design, and math. Gotta Catch 'Em All! Raspberry Pi and Java Pokemon Training—The Pokemon escaped the laboratory and were running amuck! Using a miniature Raspberry Pi computer, a 3D-printed pokeball, and the Java programming language, students were able to catch all the escaped Pokemon and return them to the professor. Python with the Warriors—Using Golden State Warriors themed interactive programs, students used Python to create variables, use the Python console, and write fun scoring games, using if, else, and while conditional statements. Be a DJ with Code—Sam Aaron, professional DJ and live coding expert, came from the UK to teach kids how to turn code into music using the Sonic Pi software. Aaron showed students how to write and modify simple routines to generate fun and interesting music as computer DJs. Building Your First Website with HTML and CSS—This session showed kids the basics of how to develop a personal website, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, plus embedding videos, animation, and design, with their very own personalized website hosted on GitHub. Playing Programming with Kids and a Robot—A robot is a great tool for showing what programming can do. This session shared the speaker's experience of doing several different projects with kids of different ages using a BB-8 robot to inspire participants to start to program. Oracle plans to host Oracle Code 4 Kids next year on September 14-15, 2019. Attend an Alice Workshop If you’re a K-12 educator in North America interested in offering Alice to your students, register for our upcoming one-hour webcast with Eric Brown on January 9, 4 p.m. PST, Get Your Students Started in Programming Using Alice. The webcast will cover: 1) A live demo of Alice world 2) Fun ways to use Alice to get your students started in programming 3) Free Oracle Academy resources using Alice Register here.  

On October 20-21, 2018, Oracle and Oracle Academy welcomed 400 students to Oracle Code 4 Kids, a fun hands-on programming event to inspire the next generation of developers and provide students...

By Chris Saxon Every application needs to store its data somewhere. This is highly likely to be in a relational database. And how do you access this data? With SQL. Structured Query Language (SQL) is one of the most enduring technologies around. It's so successful that many non-relational, "NoSQL" databases are scrambling to add SQL interfaces. For students who are interested in becoming a developer, data analyst or database administrator, it's almost certain they'll need to use SQL at some point in their careers. Knowing how to use it will be an invaluable skill throughout their programming life. But where do learners begin? A Free SQL Tutorial for Beginners Oracle Dev Gym introduces Databases for Developers: Foundations. This 12-part tutorial teaches students the basics of SQL, including how to create database tables, query, and store data in them. Each module starts with a video introducing a database concept. These entertaining videos give an overview of the feature. An interactive LiveSQL tutorial follows. These flesh out the syntax details and enable learners to practice writing real SQL statements. Finally, to check that learners have understood the content, each module finishes with a series of quizzes. The best part? This tutorial is 100% FREE and run completely online. So what are you waiting for? Head over to the Oracle Dev Gym and register now. Student Feedback Still not sure? Here are selected quotes from the thousands of people who joined the first version of this tutorial. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive: "Considered as being aimed at beginner developers, the class covered many aspects, including some that are almost beyond a beginner level. But it did it in a very intuitive way, and I am sure that all the newcomers have enjoyed it." Iudith "Keep the great job. The material is explained in a very clear way! I would like to see more of your classes." Manuel "Videos were very fun, I enjoyed them too much. Quiz answers were highly detailed and well explained." Tolga "That it introduced me to databases in the friendliest way I've seen so far." topofkeks "The videos were great and I loved that Chris provided examples and made real life comparisons to help us understand the concepts." Alisha  "Great for beginners." Kashif  "I loved the images Chris chose to use in the videos; they added a funny visual component that made the concepts easy to recall later on. Also, the pace - keeping the segments to 5-10 minutes made it easy to process one concept before moving on to the next." "Very concentrated content. Did not take very long to get the concepts across. I appreciated the casual and comical approach to the explanations. Offering this content for a beginner at no cost is an extremely generous and helpful resource, and is a testament to the commitment of all who were involved." Frequently Asked Questions What will students learn? This course will teach the basics of SQL and working with Oracle Database. It covers the following topics: Module 1: Tables Module 2: Columns and Data Types Module 3: Data Modeling Module 4: Tables, Columns and Modeling Review Module 5: Select and Where Module 6: Joins Module 7: Aggregates and Group By Module 8: Select, Joins and Grouping Review Module 9: Insert and Commit Module 10: Update and Transactions Module 11: Delete and Truncate Module 12: Course Review How much does this cost? Nothing. Nada. Nil. Zilch. That's right, it's 100% FREE! My students missed the start. Can they still join? Yes! They can join Databases for Developers at any time, as it’s all online. When does the course end? The modules have no fixed end date. Once someone registers, he or she can take open classes whenever they want. How much time will it take? We estimate that this will take up to 30 minutes per module. What if learners fall behind? This is a self-paced course. Once registered, students have lifetime access to these materials to review at any time and complete it at their leisure. What is the format of this course? The course is a combination of: Videos designed to teach database concepts. Coding tutorials to practice skills. Quizzes to deepen knowledge. Do students need access to an Oracle Database? No! This is a fully online course. The materials are designed so learners can complete the course without a database. And to practice what they’ve learned, they can head to LiveSQL, a free, browser-based tool they can use to write SQL. Does each student receive a certificate for completing this course? Yes! If one completes all the exercises, he or she receives a certificate of achievement. If students already have a good working knowledge of SQL and Oracle Database, is this course right for them? This course is aimed at beginners. It assumes no prior knowledge of SQL or Oracle Database. For advanced users, there may be little new. But it never hurts to brush up on the basics, right? ;) For students confident with the basics who want to go beyond, we recommend Databases for Developers: Next Level. For unanswered questions, who do I contact? You can reach out to Chris Saxon on Twitter Ready? Head over to the Oracle Dev Gym and join!

By Chris Saxon Every application needs to store its data somewhere. This is highly likely to be in a relational database. And how do you access this data? With SQL. Structured Query Language (SQL) is one...

As part of their ongoing studies in computer programming, 64 final year students and three faculty from Funabashi Joho Business College of Technology in Chiba, Japan, visited the Oracle office in Tokyo. The college is an Institutional Member of Oracle Academy, and as a member benefit, the students had the opportunity to learn more about programming as a career and the daily work of a programmer, and participate in technical sessions that provided insight into the technical skills most in demand. Hosted by Oracle Academy, the sessions were led by Daisuke Okada, senior manager, Oracle University in Japan. He covered the importance of Oracle certification to help students gain a competitive edge when seeking internships or jobs. To prepare its students for tech careers, the Funabashi Joho Business College of Technology has helped its students achieve Oracle certifications, with 44 students becoming Certified Java Programmers this year alone. These students will graduate from the School of IT Engineering & Information Processing in March 2019 ready to start their careers in the IT industry as programmers or software engineers. The students also took a tour of the Oracle office, which provided them with an understanding of the day-to-day operations of a large IT company. Takehiro Iida, a faculty member of the IT Engineering & Information Processing department at college, said of the visit, “…we are glad to have an informative message to our students from one of the top IT companies, helping the students keep their motivation.”

As part of their ongoing studies in computer programming, 64 final year students and three faculty from Funabashi Joho Business College of Technology in Chiba, Japan, visited the Oracle office...

Oracle Academy recently joined with the Department of Computing at the National University of Science & Technology (NUST) in Islamabad to provide students with a knowledge-building seminar on autonomous databases and machine learning, two of the key technologies Oracle focuses on. The informational session was provided by Atif Humayun, Oracle consulting manager in Pakistan, who volunteered his time for this event. Students were from the School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (SEECS). “The seminar was extremely informative, and the high participation illustrated the importance of these topics to our students and faculty. Oracle Academy is an excellent initiative, and we appreciate you taking time to provide us with timely information,” said Dr. Anis ur Rahman, PhD, head of the Department of Computer Science, NUST. “The positive responses to the talk are a reflection of Oracle's acceptance and credibility within the technology industry.” Learn more about Oracle Academy courses on database and machine learning in Java.

Oracle Academy recently joined with the Department of Computing at the National University of Science & Technology (NUST) in Islamabad to provide students with a knowledge-building seminar...

The next wave of digital transformation is utilizing technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to transform economies, industries, and employment. These technologies are creating a demand for new skills and are requiring students to think computationally so they are prepared to participate in the digital workforce of the future. Recognizing the importance of bringing these real-world technology skills to students, Oracle Academy held two round-table events that brought together 30 faculty members from 18 key universities in Ankara (on October 24, 2018) and Istanbul (on November 6, 2018) to foster collaboration between industry and higher education. These participant-driven roundtables allowed us to inform faculty members about current developments in emerging technologies and hear from them on the challenges they face in equipping their students with the skills needed to move successfully from college to career. We concluded the events with fruitful discussions around the ways that Oracle Academy can enhance our engagement with universities. Part of the discussion focused on how they can better implement our new course curriculum on artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as the modular Education Bytes, which offer instructional materials on database, programming, and data science for them to use within their classrooms. We thank these dedicated faculty members for their interest in continuing to enhance their computer science offerings to help prepare their students for fulfilling careers in today’s economy.  Learn more about our full course curriculum.  

The next wave of digital transformation is utilizing technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to transform economies, industries, and employment. These technologies...

On September 28, Oracle Academy was proud to participate in the event “4.0 Industry” at the Faculty of Public Accounting and Administration (FACPYA) at the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon (UANL), Mexico. We participated in different conferences and workshops on object-oriented programming (Java). During the event, Pablo Morales Lopez, Oracle deal manager, and José Orozco, Oracle Academy country manager, had the opportunity to share with more than 2,000 student attendees a full day centered on Oracle Academy technology and resources available to educators and students. In addition, Oracle Academy Mexico hosted a workshop, “Introduction to Programming with Alice,” that more than 150 students attended. These participants, all earning Bachelor's Degrees in information technology, public accounting, or administration, enthusiastically created animations in 3D using the Alice platform. The Keynote Conference hosted by Oracle Academy focused on “Blockchain and Fintech in Mexico.” Lopez spoke about the general panorama of Mexico, second place in Latin America and leading the Fintech conversation and topics around it. Complementing the presentation, José Orozco discussed the benefits that students and teachers receive through Oracle Academy, including materials centered on teaching and learning about important topics such as ERP, big data, and artificial intelligence. The event was attended by Dr. Maria Eugenia Garcia de la Peña, director of the Faculty of Public Accounting and Administration (FACPYA), M.D.O. Arturo Martinez Lerma, deputy managing director of FACPYA, Dr. Roxana Saldivar Del Angel, deputy director of FACPYA, and M.E.S. Jose Luis Ramos Martinez, coordinator of information technologies. Oracle Academy is committed to bringing computing education across Latin America and the Caribbean. We thank Jose Orozco and Pablo Morales Lopez for their valuable leadership and support during this important event.

On September 28, Oracle Academy was proud to participate in the event “4.0 Industry” at the Faculty of Public Accounting and Administration (FACPYA) at the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon (UANL),...

Oracle Academy recently hosted a series of two webcasts on Oracle Database and Oracle Application Express (APEX) for students and teachers from five countries in Sub-Sahara Africa: Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast and Ghana. The webcasts were led by Joel Kallman, Oracle senior director for software development and a leader in the APEX community. Oracle APEX is a cloud-based application practice environment. Many faculty used classroom hours for their students to attend the webcasts, and other teachers and students connected in groups and individually to join Kallman in exploring practical sessions on how to use APEX. The sessions also addressed challenging topics and roadblocks that can hinder learning and teaching. Following the first webcast, participants had projects to work on and solve prior to the next one. The first session covered: Explanation of Oracle database Demonstration of APEX and code application development Demonstration of APEX as an effective tool to introduce other software development topics Assignment: Assign yourself a workspace on APEX Session two covered: Review of the assignment How to get started with APEX A live session on using APEX This series was the first of its kind in Sub-Sahara Africa, and the results were impressive. Due to the engagement of attendees, the Oracle APEX community has expressed interest in continuing to support the growing community in Africa. Thank you to Joel Kallman for dedicating his time and support to fostering this growth.    

Oracle Academy recently hosted a series of two webcasts on Oracle Database and Oracle Application Express (APEX) for students and teachers from five countries in Sub-Sahara Africa: Kenya, Nigeria,...

In October, Oracle Academy announced a partnership with the Federal Ministry of Education (FMoE) of Nigeria to create new and advanced computing education pathways for teachers and students. Through the agreement, the FMoE plans to integrate Oracle Academy computer science curriculum and resources countrywide across 10,000 academic institutions, reaching more than 1.5 million students. Over the next three years, Oracle Academy also will facilitate the training of 4,000 secondary school and higher education educators to teach computer science. These trainings will prepare educators as instructors for the following Oracle Academy courses: Database Foundations Database Design and Programming with SQL Programming with PL/SQL Java Foundations Java Fundamentals Java Programming The Federal Ministry of Education has reviewed the National Policy on ICT in Education and has developed national guidelines for its implementation mapped to Oracle Academy curriculum. “As we are all aware, ICT has become the driver of competitiveness in the world today. It has redefined efficiency and productivity, and changed the dynamics of the world of work. Oracle Academy is well-known globally for the advancement of computer science education. There is therefore, no doubt that our partnership will bring great improvements to the education sector and Nigeria as a whole,” says permanent secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Arch, Sonny S.T Echono. Preparing Learners with Skills for Fulfilling Careers “As technological innovation increasingly drives our global economy, computer science skills become even more critical,” says Adebayo Sanni, managing director, Oracle Nigeria. “We look forward to continuing our collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Education in Nigeria through Oracle Academy, and advancing our collective educational mission to support students and teachers in computer science and drive diversity in technology.” The government in Nigeria believes that the country’s education system must prepare its learners for the demands of the 21st century by producing skilled workers at various levels who can play an active role in driving growth within the country. To achieve its goals, the country’s public and private sectors must collaborate effectively. “This is truly an exciting time for Oracle. This is what happens when hard work meets opportunity. It’s an opportunity to deliver the largest partnership that has ever been seen in Africa,” said Sanni. The agreement signed with the Nigeria Federal Ministry of Education in Abuja, Nigeria, is the largest limited partnership agreement (LPA) in Oracle Academy history. The 10,000 academic institutions will become Oracle Academy Institutional members, with support offered to all faculty. Thank you to Oracle Academy Country Manager Oluwasefunmi Fadahunsi, business practices and operations advisor Lahrin Koucky, Adebayo Sanni, and other Oracle Academy staff for their hard work on bringing this project to fruition. The event was reported in numerous publications, including the following. TV360 Nigeria: Television news story NaijaPR: http://www.naijapr.com/oracle-academy-partners-with-education-ministry-to-help-over-1-5-million-students/ TechcityNG: https://www.techcityng.com/oracle-academy-joins-the-federal-ministry-of-education-nigeria-to-advance-computing-education/ Techpoint: https://techpoint.africa/2018/10/17/oracle-academy-joins-the-federal-ministry-of-education-nigeria-to-advance-computing-education/ ITWeb Africa: http://www.itwebafrica.com/ict-and-governance/265-nigeria/245013-oracle-academy-steps-up-ict-training-in-nigeria Vanguard: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/10/fg-oracle-academy-partner-on-new-computing-education-pathways-for-students/ Interested in learning more about becoming an Institutional member of Oracle Academy? Learn more and join.

In October, Oracle Academy announced a partnership with the Federal Ministry of Education (FMoE) of Nigeria to create new and advanced computing education pathways for teachers and students. Through...

For the first time in Greece, primary school students learned to code in Java using Alice. As part of the EU Code Week, on October 20 and 21, 100 students from the fourth, fifth and sixth grades of primary schools from Evros, Crete, Nafpaktos, Trikala, Karpenisi, Chalkida, and Athens were introduced to coding with Java using Alice during a two-day event at the National Library of Greece. The children, escorted by their IT teachers and parents, spent the weekend learning how to create 3D animation stories with the educational software Alice, based on workshop material provided by Oracle Academy. The five teachers who taught the students, were trained, along with 13 more, during a teachers’ workshop, “Getting Started with Java Using Alice” in September. The event was organized by the Unit of Innovation and Best Practices of Ministry of Administrative Reconstruction (MAR). MAR is responsible for the coordination of the National Digital Coalition for Skills and Jobs, of which Oracle Academy is an active member, and the Unit of Innovation and Best Practices has the responsibility of its operational planning. We thank all those organizations that provided support to make this event possible, including the municipalities of the participating schools that provided travel expenses, the National Library of Greece that provided the lab space, Revive Greece, which provided the laptops needed, and EELLAK, which provided a 3D printer. The Greek Public TV covered the opening and start of the workshops. Watch a video (in Greek language) that aired on the ERT1 channel. We thank Eleni Tsipa, PR and corporate citizenship specialist, GCMM cluster, and Antonis Monokrousos, country leader for Oracle Hellas, for attending the opening ceremony and supporting Oracle Academy in the region. We look forward to Oracle Academy program implementation in even more Greek schools in the future. Interested in introducing this program or other fun programming workshops in your schools? Learn more about Oracle Academy workshops here, including Getting Started with Java Using Alice, Creating Java Programs with Greenfoot, and Programming the Finch Robot in Greenfoot.

For the first time in Greece, primary school students learned to code in Java using Alice. As part of the EU Code Week, on October 20 and 21, 100 students from the fourth, fifth and sixth grades...

To celebrate and promote women in computing, ACM India, the ACM Women chapter of Ahmedabad University, in conjunction with Oracle Academy, conducted the Third National-Level Hackathon for Women in Computing in October. The theme of projects was creating a “Sustainable Smart Society." The hackathon invited open platform application development, and participating teams could decide whether to develop a web or mobile application, or any kind of software, centered on the theme. Hackathons are proving grounds for new ideas and tools to stimulate the creative and problem-solving juices of computer aspirants. The event was designed to inspire and empower girls to come forward and unveil their talents in computing technology. The goal of the hackathon was to inspire current and potential developers, designers, and entrepreneurs to come together, form connections and apply their skills to creating something of value. Participants found the hackathon to be an intellectually stimulating activity that spurred ideas for innovation and collaboration. The first round of the ACM-W Hackathon received tremendous response, with registration of 300-plus teams of computer aspirants from all over India, ready to exhibit their talents and innovative thinking capabilities. A team of highly professional industry representatives and ACM members evaluated the ideas of each team. Judges assessed each idea for innovation and implementation, and its application in creating a Sustainable Smart Society. A shortlist of 10 teams were selected for the grand finale. All the top 10 finalist teams, accompanied by their respective mentors, participated in an exciting on-site final round. Each of these teams had 24 hours to successfully run their application and showcase their idea to the judging panel. A team from the School of Engineering and Applied Science, Ahmedabad University, won first place for a “Know Your Own Surroundings” app that allows users to determine pollution levels and other contaminants in their surroundings. A team from Goa University won second place with “Medikit,” an app that helps users keep track of medications and gives timely reminders to take medicine. A team from Amrita School of Engineering won third place with their “Elderly Fall Detection System” app, which sends out an SOS in case of a fall. Finally, another team from Ahmedabad University, School of Computer Studies, won a special mention for its innovative project, a “Data Security Using Data Masking” project. Students placing first, second, and third place won cash prizes, trophies and certificates. We at Oracle Academy enthusiastically encourage and support such inventive young women, the tech innovators and leaders of the future.

To celebrate and promote women in computing, ACM India, the ACM Women chapter of Ahmedabad University, in conjunction with Oracle Academy, conducted the Third National-Level Hackathon for Women...

Oracle Academy recently provided a group of students in their final year of engineering study with the opportunity for industry interaction through visits to Oracle’s offices in Hyderabad and Bangalore. The students met with Oracle senior leaders, the Oracle campus recruitment team, and recent campus graduate hires and employees. They had the opportunity to learn about Oracle, trends in the IT industry, and emerging technologies from senior Oracle staff, including Senior Director, Supply Chain Financial Orchestration, Gautham Mangari and Director, Oracle E-business Manufacturing and SCM Suite, Chandu Tadanki. Oracle hires who were recent graduates shared valuable insights on how they prepared for a career in IT and why they picked Oracle as their first organization to work for. They shared inspiring personal stories of their journey from campus to corporate life. Campus recruiter Shilpa Nanjundaiah shared her experiences as she travels to universities to recruit students for Oracle roles, and conducted a workshop on preparing for job interviews and resume writing and soft skills. Oracle Academy would like to thank our partners from Telangana Academy for Skills and Knowledge (TASK) and the ICT Academy for supporting this initiative to help aspiring students get career ready and get a peek into Oracle as an organization.

Oracle Academy recently provided a group of students in their final year of engineering study with the opportunity for industry interaction through visits to Oracle’s offices in Hyderabad...

Oracle Academy was delighted to participate in the 2018 Java Community Conference held in Taiwan in October, with over 500 participants, including developers, startups, tech companies and academics. Oracle Academy delivered a session on Oracle Academy’s global philanthropic program, describing how educators may use its free computing education resources to teach students at higher education or secondary education institutions. We described the flexible, modular resources Oracle Academy offers to help institutions and educators advance diversity in computing and create better life and career opportunities for their students. Oracle experts also provided information of note at this significant annual event. Yudi Zheng, Senior Researcher, Oracle Labs, was a keynote speaker, and Ivan Tu , MySQL APAC Principal Sales Consultant, also presented. The Java Community Conference is organized by the Taiwan Java User Group and centered around the Java programming language and related technologies. The conference offers a space for Java programmers to meet and discuss developments in Java, and provides a networking environment for meeting like-minded professionals.

Oracle Academy was delighted to participate in the 2018 Java Community Conference held in Taiwan in October, with over 500 participants, including developers, startups, tech companies and academics. Ora...

By William McRae, Educator Now that the new academic year or term is well underway for all of us, I’m back in the staff room discussing working with a new group of students and the opportunities that it brings. In the classroom, students are still excited about the material we’re working on. I have a diverse mix of subjects I’m teaching, including database design and programming and programming in Java—and for the first time I have applications development as well.  With first- and second-year diploma and degree classes here in the U.K., I have a wide range of abilities to cater to this year. Thankfully, I have Oracle Academy curriculum to back me up. I have been a member of Oracle Academy since 2009, across two higher education colleges, and have attended teacher training events in multiple curriculum. I use Oracle Academy curriculum in my classroom as the main delivery tool for all subjects relating to database and programming subjects, and I’ll be introducing the students to applications development this year, so that will be something new for both of us. New curriculum offerings There are lots of new additions to the Oracle Academy curriculum this year. I’ve reviewed the updates and I’m impressed with what I see. There’s a new course, Artificial Intelligence with Machine Learning in Java, which I’m checking out to see how I can use it to introduce this important topic to my students. AI and machine learning are the future, after all! I also note there is a brand-new section called Oracle Academy Education Bytes, which are made up of hands-on labs, videos and presentations, and projects and challenges. I think I can use these to aid my in-class delivery. With the Education Bytes at different levels from beginner and intermediate up to advanced level in Java subjects, it means that all my students will be accommodated. If I have a range of abilities in one class, no one will get left behind, as they all can work on the same exercises with different levels of assistance to suit their current levels of understanding. I watch the new videos, including the Oracle Innovate: Lessons from Entrepreneurs series; interesting. I realize I can use these to start discussions and give the students insight into the professional world that they are heading into. These look like a great resource for my students to get insight into what young entrepreneurs should know, and there are some nice examples of the personal development they can focus on to help them achieve their ambitions. Delving deeper into these Education Bytes, I’m pleased to see there are hands-on labs for different technologies that include some short duration content. The new content on big data looks especially interesting, and I look forward to trying it out with my more advanced student groups. It’s always been difficult to give the students practical experience in big data, but not now! My students and I are excited to continue exploring these new Oracle Academy resources throughout the school year. Continue to engage your students this year with Oracle Academy database and object-oriented programming (Java) curriculum, Oracle Academy Education Bytes videos and presentations, hands-on labs, and projects and challenges, and the new Artificial Intelligence with Machine Learning in Java course. Log in to iLearning and explore!

By William McRae, Educator Now that the new academic year or term is well underway for all of us, I’m back in the staff room discussing working with a new group of students and the opportunities that...

Oracle Academy, Oracle Staff Attend CECIIS Conference, Present on Blockchain Varaždin, the picturesque and colorful “baroque capital” of Croatia, has been since 1974 the seat of the Croatian Faculty of Organization and Informatics of the University of Zagreb. On September 19-21, 2018, the organization hosted its 29th Central European Conference on the Intelligent and Information Systems (CECIIS). This year’s conference focused on topics such as data and knowledge bases, as well as education and learning analytics, all areas where Oracle is a clear global technology leader. The faculty have been Oracle Academy members since September 2015, and this conference was an excellent opportunity not just to again brief educators and students on the numerous Oracle Academy benefits available to them, but also to present the latest information from Oracle on the Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service. The presentation, delivered by Ivan Delić, Solution Engineer from Oracle Croatia, explored perspectives on using blockchain outside the cryptocurrency world, and illustrated how this newer technology can address business challenges in major industries. The cooperation between Oracle Academy and the Faculty of Organization and Informatics (home of Oracle-related teaching and learning for more than two decades) will continue as the organizations jointly explore new opportunities brought to Croatia and Eastern Europe by various EU programs that support closer connections and collaboration between academia and the technology industry. Oracle Academy Supports Central European Olympiad of Informatics in Poland Oracle Academy supported the Central European Olympiad in Informatics (CEOI) for the first time this year. CEOI is an international programming competition for secondary school students, organized on annual basis since 1994, and is the ultimate preparation step for winners of the national programming competitions before attending the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). The 25th Olympiad, CEOI 2018, was held on August 12-18, 2018, in Warsaw, Poland, at the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics, and Mechanics of the Warsaw University, under the patronage of the Polish Ministry of National Education. Students from the Central European countries of Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia participate at the CEOI on regular basis, while student teams from Azerbaijan, Austria, Georgia, Italy, and Switzerland were invited to participate as guests. Each country sent a team of up to four contestants, winners of their national Olympiads in informatics, which competed individually in solving problems of algorithmic nature in different programming languages. Student teams were accompanied by their leaders, usually older or PhD students, faculty staff, or IT professionals. In total, 55 contestants and 25 team leaders took part in the CEOI competition this year. This year, Java, the programming language in highest demand on the market, according to third-party sources like TIOBE index, was one of the supported programming languages at the CEOI competition, which we see as an important step towards including Java as a programming language at the national competitions level in Central European Countries as well. Learn more by visiting the CEOI 2018 website, and view photos from the competition on the CEOI 2018 Facebook page.  

Oracle Academy, Oracle Staff Attend CECIIS Conference, Present on Blockchain Varaždin, the picturesque and colorful “baroque capital” of Croatia, has been since 1974 the seat of the Croatian Faculty...

October 2018 has been a busy month in Romania, with Oracle Academy involved in many projects that support the computing development of both students and educators. Oracle Volunteers Get Ready to Help Students with Java Using Alice Projects On October 4, 2018, in Bucharest, Oracle Academy and Oracle Women Lead (OWL) Romania ran a pilot event, a two-hour workshop that trained Oracle Volunteers on the Getting Started with Java Using Alice platform. Two facilitators, Oana Pupaza and Viorica Nica, assisted 16 Oracle Romania volunteers to learn how to create an animation project using the Alice platform. Volunteers participating in this pilot will be equipped and educated so they can get involved with their local high schools and assist teachers to help grade 9 or 10 students to start to learn Java programming using the Alice platform. We hope to repeat this exciting pilot to bring more computing knowledge to students in the area. Oracle Academy Attends Opening of the New Database Master Support for Business Program On October 9, 2018, Oracle Academy Romania participated in the opening event of the Database Master Support for Business (BDSA) program of The Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest. The Masters course is aimed at students who want to thoroughly deepen their knowledge of new information technology, and at those who want to develop or improve their technical business skills. The key objectives of the Masters course are to teach students to be specialists in the field of databases, and involve master students in internship programs and projects that ultimately lead to technology jobs. BDSA students study subjects from the Oracle Academy Curriculum: Evolved Database Systems (SQL and PL/SQL), Cloud Database Integration (APEX), Java Database Development Platform (Java courses), Integration of Information Systems (Big Data), and Big Data Management (Big Data). BDSA students also benefit from the experience of Oracle professionals and specialists who support workshops in the master’s program disciplines. Oracle Academy Romania invited our colleague, Victor Maghiari, to present at the event on the importance of personal branding, “How to Brand Yourself.” Learn more about the BDSA program here. Oracle Academy Proud to Sponsor Romanian Master of Informatics (RMI) Sixth Edition Oracle Academy staff had the opportunity to attend the opening of the sixth edition of the Romanian Master of Informatics, RMI 2018, which was held in Bucharest from October 10 to October 13, 2018. The event was hosted by the Tudor Vianu National High School of Computer Science. The program provided questions related to informatics that participants needed to answer. Participants in this contest were 27 teams from eight countries: Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia and Serbia. RMI provides a great opportunity for young people to demonstrate their abilities in informatics, exchange knowledge, make new friends from different countries, visit Romania, and enhance cross-cultural contacts in high school education. Learn more about the RMI event.

October 2018 has been a busy month in Romania, with Oracle Academy involved in many projects that support the computing development of both students and educators. Oracle Volunteers Get Ready to Help...

Oracle Academy recently supported the #mydigitalmaker event held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, by the Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and the Ministry of Education of Malaysia. The two-day event showcased joint initiatives by the public, private and academic sectors to equip Malaysian youth for participating in and holding careers in the digital economy. According to the event, this includes skills such as coding, app development, 3D printing, robotics, embedded programming and data analytics; all of which ultimately help strengthen problem-solving and creativity. The Fair notes that digital innovations are disrupting all sectors and creating new job opportunities, and that 90% of all future jobs will require digital competencies. The digital economy is expected to contribute to 18.2% of the Malaysian GDP by 2020. The event was attended by more than 40,000 participants from primary and secondary schools through to university, and included engaging exhibitions, workshops and competitions, plus a career fair and talks by leading industry experts on the digital maker movement. Mohamed Fitri Abdullah, managing director of Oracle Malaysia, presented on “Rebooting Jobs/ Computer Science Skills Across the Job Market,” which examined how computer science skills are in demand, even for jobs where a computer science major is not a requirement. Oracle Academy staff also conducted a workshop for teachers focused on using Alice 3D as an introductory Java development tool developing 3D animations, for those students with little or no programming experience. Learn more about this initiative at the #MyDigitalMaker Fair website.

Oracle Academy recently supported the #mydigitalmaker event held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, by the Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and the Ministry of Education of Malaysia. The two-day...

Aligned with the Singapore government's focus on digitalization, the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) launched its inaugural Data Analytics Challenge for its three ITE colleges, under the theme “Using Data Analytics for a Better Future.” The objective of the challenge was to create awareness of data analytics among ITE students, stimulate their interest in data analytics, and provide a practical, hands-on sampling of the process and benefits of data analytics. Teams of students ages 17-19 studying various disciplines, including business, gaming, IT and electrical engineering, conducted data analysis projects related to real world social issues facing Singapore. Key topics the projects addressed included the economy and employment, education, the environment, health and wellness, infrastructure, and transport, to name a few. After conducting data analysis, student teams submitted reports drawing conclusions from their research, and then presented their findings and recommendations on how they would tackle these issues and improve lives in Singapore. Oracle Academy was pleased to support the judging panel, alongside Singapore Info-communications Media Development Authority (IMDA) and Microsoft. Twelve finalist teams, shortlisted from 63, showcased their competition entries. Winning entries were teams Challenger (Can Singapore be the safest country in the world?), UV-Ace (Does the inflation rate in Singapore affects consumers’ decisions in purchasing an HDB flat?), and MAD using data (Using Data to Enhance the Customer’s F&B Experience at Gain City Megastore @ Sungei Kadut). “It was great to see students from different disciplines working together and sharing their different perspectives toward addressing important social and economic problems facing Singapore today,” said Danny Tomic of Oracle Academy. “Using data analytics, they were able to formulate and test various hypothesis and come up with recommendations for resolving these issues. The quality of their work was outstanding.” Tomic said that ITE has confirmed that the event will take place again in 2019. “I excitedly look forward to seeing what the next group of students are able to produce,” he said.

Aligned with the Singapore government's focus on digitalization, the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) launched its inaugural Data Analytics Challenge for its three ITE colleges, under the theme...

The Oracle APEX Product Development team members Chaitanya Koratamaddi and Shakeeb Rahman recently were in India to conduct APEX meetups in the cities of Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bengaluru. At these meetups, students learned about what's new in Oracle APEX 18 and how to use APEX cloud-based environments to build beautiful, responsive apps using universal themes. In Chennai, the team collaborated with Oracle Academy to host a special Oracle APEX-focused Oracle Academy Student Day at Rajalakshmi Engineering College. This engaging event was attended by 135 students from 10 different colleges. On the day of the event, despite heavy rains and a holiday being declared by the state government, the students showed up in full strength ready to attend the APEX event. The students received an introduction to APEX and hands-on experience in creating applications. Each student was able to create a cloud-based APEX account and use it to practice creating applications. The enthusiasm of the students to learn the technology was amazing. With many more students eager to learn in cloud-based environments, the Oracle APEX team has promised to return for more events in the future.

The Oracle APEX Product Development team members Chaitanya Koratamaddi and Shakeeb Rahmanrecently were in India to conduct APEX meetups in the cities of Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bengaluru. At these...

More than 8,800 students from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand attended a Virtual Student Day on September 27, 2018, hosted by Oracle Academy. The students came from more than 1,000 educational institutions across the region that registered for the event as a part of their membership benefits with Oracle Academy, and numerous students registered on their own for the event as well. The students and their teachers had the opportunity to choose from 21 presentations spread over two ‘technical’ tracks, and from a ‘career’ track. Presentations covered computing subjects as diverse as Agile software development, artificial intelligence, internet of things, blockchain, cybersecurity, and NoSQL, and career subjects including Planning Your Career, Careers in Cloud, and Resume Building. For attendees, this Oracle Academy Virtual Student Day was a valuable offering that provided students with a wide range of engaging and relevant topics that support their studies and interest in computing and the information technology industry. The attendees are able to chat and ask questions with presenters as well as communicate with other participants during the event. They also are able to revisit all the presentations and the event site for 30 days after the event to either attend sessions they missed or revisit ones they enjoyed. This is the fourth Virtual Student Day that Oracle Academy has hosted across the Asia Pacific region in the last two years, reaching more than 20,000 students with the latest information in computing technology and IT careers. For more than two decades, Oracle Academy has been supporting secondary and higher education institutions with in-kind grants of technology, curriculum, and teacher training resources. In the past year, Oracle Academy has helped 6.3 million students in 128 countries gain industry-relevant skills prior to entering the workplace. To support continuous computer science learning at all levels, Oracle Academy makes available a variety of resources that can be used in the classroom and in not-for-profit academic courses and degree-related research, including technology, curriculum and courseware, student workshops, and educator training. Learn more about our Student Day events.  

More than 8,800 students from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand attended a Virtual Student Day on September 27, 2018, hosted by Oracle Academy. T...

  Marc Schröder, a student of the vocational school Berufsschule Freising in Munich, is currently undertaking dual study as a “Computer Science Expert for Software Development” at Flughafen München GmbH, the operator of Munich Airport. At the same time, he also is studying for his diploma at an Oracle Academy institutional member, the technical branch of Berufsschule Freising. The school has embedded Java Programming courses into its curriculum, and Schröder was made aware of Java certification possibilities by his teacher Mr. Pfleiderer. He successfully passed the Oracle Certified Associate Java SE 8 Programmer certification exam in spring 2018. At a graduation school event in July, Marc introduced his certification exam project to a large audience, which acknowledged him with a large round of applause. Afterwards, Oracle Academy program manager Britta Wolf (pictured) had the opportunity to chat with him in the following interview. Q: Marc, what was your motivation to prepare for a Java certification exam? You are working and also have a tight school schedule. Both certainly keep you very busy. A: Computers always have been my passion. Whenever I find time, I work with computers. Therefore, certification was a good opportunity for me to consolidate and prove my knowledge. The Oracle certificate was a great addition to our Java lessons in vocational school. Q: The certification exam lasts about 150 minutes and you have to answer 70 questions. May we ask you how much time approximately did you invest in preparing for the exam? A: I started with the preparation in the summer of 2017. I passed the certification exam in the spring of 2018. This gave me about six months for preparation. During the school semester, I spent about eight hours per week on preparation. Of course, this is not possible during normal working hours. Nevertheless, in the remaining weeks, during which I did not have to attend school, I spent about five hours a week preparing. Q: Oracle Certifications take place at Pearson Vue test centers. How was your experience at the test center? A: I scheduled the exam at a test center in Munich and I was very satisfied. At the test center, you have to identify yourself first. Then a picture is taken and you have to sign a registration form. The actual test took place at a computer in a small room. Although the room is video-monitored, I did not feel “watched”. During the exam, I had to lock away my smartphone. Q: The Oracle Certified Associate (OCA) certification is a great step into Oracle certification. Are you planning to complete another certification in the near future? A: Yes. In fact, I already have ordered the book for the Oracle Certified Professional (OCP). I'm very happy with the OCA, but I'm also looking for certificates in other areas. Learn more about certification through Oracle Academy courses.

  Marc Schröder, a student of the vocational school Berufsschule Freising in Munich, is currently undertaking dual study as a “Computer Science Expert for Software Development” at Flughafen München...

On September 3, 2018, Oracle Academy signed its first partnership agreement in Chile, with Pais Digital. Pais Digital is a non-profit organization that works directly with public high schools and the Ministry of Education of Chile to include and improve computer science content in (secondary) technical schools. Oracle Academy will help in their efforts by providing our curriculum focused on object-oriented programming (Java) to 74 institutions, which will impact more than 2,000 students across the country, helping to make them career ready. The government of Chile is working to improve technical and vocational education across the country’s technical high schools to increase graduation rates in computer science programs; the country and its employers require many more workers skilled in computing to meet its labor force needs. To this end, the government is working with Pais Digital to improve computing content in the technical schools as part of its mission to promote development and inclusion of a digital culture to improve education, life quality, and country development. Its work complements the Chile governmental initiatives to increase quality and inclusion in education. This initiative aligns with the mission of Oracle Academy to advance computer science education globally to drive knowledge, innovation, skills development, and diversity in technology fields. Education is a prerequisite to community stability, economic prosperity, and future innovation, and students and educators who engage with Oracle Academy gain industry-relevant skills and knowledge that enrich their futures. To support this government strategy, Oracle Academy and Pais Digital are collaborating to include Oracle Academy programming curriculum in public technical school courses. In parallel, Oracle Academy will train an initial 20 faculty members, who then will train more than 50 additional faculty to teach computing education. Cumulatively, these faculty members will implement Oracle Academy courses Java Fundamentals, Java Foundations, and Java Programming into their classrooms, ultimately reaching more than 2,000 students over three years. Oracle Academy is committed to bringing computing education to all of Latin America and the Caribbean. We thank Sandra Guazotti, Oracle Managing Director, Chile, and Ines Locatelli, Oracle Academy Country Manager, Chile, for their support in bringing this important initiative within Chile to fruition. Learn more about Oracle Academy and our Java curriculum.  

On September 3, 2018, Oracle Academy signed its first partnership agreement in Chile, with Pais Digital. Pais Digital is a non-profit organization that works directly with public high schools and the...

As demand for computer science skills expands, educational programs to develop these skills are expanding, and students around the world are taking advantage of opportunities to learn as early in their education as possible. Seikei School, established in Tokyo in 1915, is part of an education precinct that provides students with a pathway through junior school, high school, and ultimately, to Seikei University. To support the school’s latest initiative to bring computer science to their students, Oracle Academy has provided the school’s teachers with access to its free offerings for coding, in particular, Java programming. Java is the foundation for virtually every networked application and remains one of the most revolutionary and powerful programming languages, with more than 9 million developers worldwide. It continuously appears in lists of the most in-demand computing skills for technology jobs. The emerging prevalence of big data is primarily rooted in Java, and the Internet of Things is being built largely upon Java. Thus, modern computer science education pathways are incomplete without courses in object-oriented programming and Java. Through their membership with Oracle Academy, the Seikei School teachers have access to a curriculum pathway for Java. It is introduced to early learners using drop-and-drag interfaces in Alice and Greenfoot. These materials, designed for students with little or no programming experience, teach basic Java programming concepts through creation of animated stories and games using objects and characters from a rich gallery of 3-D models. The students are able to learn with fun and engaging activities, while still leveraging best academic curriculum practices like project-based learning and methods of learning assessment for educators. These young Japanese students are well on their way to continue developing their computer science skills throughout their education. Learn more about Oracle Academy Java curriculum and becoming a member at academy.oracle.com.

As demand for computer science skills expands, educational programs to develop these skills are expanding, and students around the world are taking advantage of opportunities to learn as early in...

Oracle Academy's mission is to advance computing education, and an important part of this is making computer science accessible to all students. We were pleased this year to partner with several U.S. national organizations to recognize and support outstanding students in computer science. To outstanding undergraduate and graduate students with a GPA of 3.5 or higher pursuing degrees in computer science or engineering at a four-year college or university, Oracle Academy provided support to each organization for two undergraduate scholarships of US$2,500 each and one graduate fellowship of US$10,000 each. The individual organizations selected scholarship winners from many qualified applicants.  We congratulate the outstanding 2018-2019 recipients of these scholarships! American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) AISES supports STEM studies and careers by serving American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, First Nations and other indigenous peoples of North America in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) studies and careers. AISES scholarships help students acquire skills and training that help them meet the STEM needs of their communities.  Congratulations to Recipients: Damien Farrant, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, Santa Barbara, Calif. $10,000 Oracle Academy graduate fellowship Kaitlyn Yamamoto, University of Washington, Bothell, Wash. $2,500 Oracle Academy undergraduate scholarship Beau Forest, University of the Pacific, Stockton, Calif. $2,500 Oracle Academy undergraduate scholarship Great Minds in STEM (HENAAC) HENAAC promotes career and networking opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math for students of Hispanic or Latino descent. The HENAAC Scholars Program addresses the immense need to produce more engineers and scientists within the U.S.  Congratulations to Recipients: Irvin Cardenas, Kent State University, Ohio $10,000 Oracle Academy graduate fellowship Bryce Badura, University of Notre Dame, Ind. $2,500 Oracle Academy undergraduate scholarship Kyle Romero, University of California, Los Angeles $2,500 Oracle Academy undergraduate scholarship United Negro College Fund (UNCF) UNCF aims to strengthen students, communities and the U.S. by helping African American students and other students of color attend and complete college. Congratulations to Recipients: Wishes to Remain Anonymous $10,000 Oracle Academy graduate fellowship Jai Huntley, Hampton University, Hampton, Va. $2,500 Oracle Academy undergraduate scholarship Sebastian Cousins, Winston- Salem State University, N.C. $2,500 Oracle Academy undergraduate scholarship We look forward to these accomplished students continuing to do great things in computer science and technology.

Oracle Academy's mission is to advance computing education, and an important part of this is making computer science accessible to all students. We were pleased this year to partner with several U.S....

Oracle Academy, as principal sponsor, supported a recent IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) conference in Bali, Indonesia, aimed at promoting collaborative innovations for society development. The IEEE is the world’s largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. Together with the Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, the conference gathered an audience of 300-plus students, lecturers, and professionals from the technology industry from countries across the Asia Pacific. Oracle Academy provided a keynote presentation and conducted a workshop for attendees over the three-day conference. The IEEE vision is to foster collaborative development by strengthening the bonds between young leaders in the region to uplift society at large with knowledge sharing and skills development. Oracle Academy is a global, philanthropic program for educators using computing education resources to teach at higher and secondary educational institutions who seek flexible modular tools and resources, and care about diversity and creating better life and career opportunities for their students.

Oracle Academy, as principal sponsor, supported a recent IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) conference in Bali, Indonesia, aimed at promoting collaborative innovations for society...

As part of our mission to promote diversity in computing, Oracle Academy hosted Girls in ICT Day events in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru featuring Oracle and Oracle Women Lead speakers. More than 700 young women participated. Girls in ICT Day is a global event that empowers and encourages young women to consider fulfilling career paths in tech that can enrich both themselves and the tech sector. More than 300,000 young women have taken part in 9,000-plus Girls in ICT Day celebrations in 166 countries worldwide. New Oracle Academy Girls in ICT Event Videos Released Oracle Academy captured the excitement of its Girls in ICT events in Latin America with a series of new videos. English subtitled: Oracle Academy Celebrates Girls in ICT 2018—Latin America Oracle Academy Celebrates Girls in ICT 2018—Brazil With Gerando Falcões, Recode, SENAC Vocational and Technical School, and Kroton Universities, Sao Paulo. Oracle Academy Celebrates Girls in ICT 2018—Colombia With Gustavo Morales public school, Bogotá, and public schools at Universidad de Medellin. Oracle Academy Celebrates Girls in ICT 2018—Mexico With Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla. Spanish: Oracle Academy Celebrates Girls in ICT 2018—Latin America Oracle Academy Celebrates Girls in ICT 2018—Mexico Portuguese: Oracle Academy Celebrates Girls in ICT 2018—Latin America Oracle Academy Celebrates Girls in ICT 2018―Brazil Read our blog post on all the events.

As part of our mission to promote diversity in computing, Oracle Academy hosted Girls in ICT Day events in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru featuring Oracle and...

Explore What’s New Now By William McCabe, Director, Member Education and Curriculum Development The Oracle Academy curriculum team is excited to share the results of our hard work over the past year: new curriculum resources based on member feedback that further add to the topics Oracle Academy members can teach and learn. Oracle Academy Education Bytes are short, flexible learning modules in programming, database, data science, and big data that teach new concepts and enhance existing knowledge and skills, problem solving, creativity, and learning retention. They can be used alone or to enhance Oracle Academy curriculum, and provide self-directed learning experiences in programming, SQL, PL/SQL, big data, R, Hadoop, and more. They include: Hands-On Labs—Step-by-step instruction-based labs on database, programming, and data science. They are designed to be facilitated by—but not led by—an educator, or self-studied by an individual learner. Some labs may require prior knowledge or completion of curriculum; others do not. Projects and Challenges—Stand-alone projects focused on database, programming, and data science that can be used independently of, during, or at the end of an Oracle Academy Workshop in a Box or course. Solutions are hosted on Oracle iLearning and require a Teacher account. Videos and Presentations—Featuring Oracle Academy courses, these can be used within the classroom or viewed by individual learners at their own pace to learn more about computer science. All Education Bytes include a content synopsis, recommended prerequisite knowledge and skills, level of difficulty, target age group, and any required software, equipment, and/or prerequisite knowledge. Artificial Intelligence with Machine Learning in Java is a new 40-hour course that helps students build a working knowledge of artificial intelligence and machine learning, both of which are increasingly widespread in business today. Providing practical, hands-on activities and project-based learning, this course is well suited for secondary and postsecondary students who possess fundamental knowledge of object-oriented concepts, data structures, recursion, terminology, and syntax in Java—all of which are learned in Oracle Academy Java Foundations and Java Programming courses. In this course, students discover machine learning concepts relevant to artificial intelligence, learning terminology, and syntax, and work on projects that challenge them to design, implement, and demonstrate a machine learning solution in Java that could be implemented for a business or organization. We’re excited about these new offerings, and look forward to continuing to enhance our computer science education portfolio. Learn more: Oracle Academy Bytes Artificial Intelligence with Machine Learning in Java

Explore What’s New Now By William McCabe, Director, Member Education and Curriculum Development The Oracle Academy curriculum team is excited to share the results of our hard work over the past year:...

Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and big data are emerging technologies on the forefront of advancing business. To provide education on these topics to government officials and educators, Oracle Academy was pleased to support a recent event offered and hosted by the South East Asian Ministry of Education Organization Regional Open Learning Centre (SEAMOLEC) in Indonesia. With support from Oracle, the event focused on these newer technologies. Guest speaker Ivan Chandra (pictured), product solutions manager for Oracle ASEAN Big Data & Analytics, shared perspectives on how these technologies are impacting the education sector. He included a demonstration on image recognition and Oracle machine learning in data visualization. The event was attended both in person and online by more than 350 participants from the Indonesian government and education. Learn more on AI and machine learning here.

Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and big data are emerging technologies on the forefront of advancing business. To provide education on these topics to government officials...

In June 2018, Oracle Academy Latin America started a second phase of a success story—a partnership with the Gerando Falcões Institute, a non-profit organization located in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the inauguration of this second stage, and meet the students and the founder of the NGO, Eduardo Lyra. This second phase will benefit 30 new students who will have the chance to take Java Foundations and Java Fundamentals courses. Through this partnership, we help students develop key programming skills for college and career readiness. Students also have the opportunity to learn English and social development skills to become better prepared for the labor market. The beginning of this story was in 2016, when Oracle Academy offered the first class of IT courses, bringing opportunities of professional and social development to 30 young people from low-income areas. From those, 15 were offered job opportunities in their areas of interest, including one young woman who was hired by Oracle. At least eight students were motivated to transform their lives through education and pursue different paths. Currently, two students from the initial class are still committed to this initiative and are coming back as teacher assistants in this year’s project. This success story would not be possible without the support of Fernando Lemos, VP Product Management, Oracle Cloud Platform-Latin America. Fernando has always been a strong advocate for Education in Latin America and an important partner for Oracle Academy. Watch our video on the project! Gerando Falcões Established in 2012 by Eduardo Lyra, one of the most relevant social entrepreneurs of Brazil, the Gerando Falcões Institute aims to improve self-esteem and offer a safe haven while helping people rise up from drugs, crime, and poor financial conditions. The organization brings development and opportunities to young people, with the main objectives of working on their self-esteem and desire to reach higher than their present circumstances. The initiative has reached and inspired more than 100,000 young people and benefited 1,200 families. The Institute plans to become a global organization, this year growing to 10 new subsidiaries and improving the lives of 18,000 families nationwide.

In June 2018, Oracle Academy Latin America started a second phase of a success story—a partnership with the Gerando Falcões Institute, a non-profit organization located in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I was...

Oracle Academy always celebrates students becoming career ready with expertise in database management. On June 19, 2018, the Faculty of Cybernetics, Statistics and Economic Informatics from Bucharest University of Economic Studies (ASE) held the graduation ceremony for 65 students who successfully completed their Master of Databases for Business Support (BDSA) degree program. Bucharest University of Economic Studies, a long-term and active member of Oracle Academy, created the Master BDSA program as part of its Oracle Excellence Centre - ASE, which was established in 1999 following a collaboration between Bucharest University of Economic Studies and Oracle Academy. BDSA students study online a variety of curriculum provided by Oracle Academy: Database Design and programming with SQL, Programming with PL/SQL, Application Development Foundations with APEX, and object-oriented (Java) programming. In addition to their curriculum studies, the students have benefited from extramural support provided by experienced Oracle specialists from the technical line of business with expertise in database management. They have volunteered their time to deliver a series of technical and practical workshops to these students during the master program. Our colleague Bogdan Petcu, Director, Customer Support, Support - Enterprise Tools (pictured) spoke with the students to advise them on how they should use the knowledge they gained during the master program to succeed in their careers in the technology sector. At the students’ graduation ceremony, Professor Ion Lungu, PhD, Director of the Master BDSA program, said, “You know how it is said: ‘The education we receive is a rehearsal for the life we choose to live.’ We are glad that we were together on this road and we hope it is only the first step towards the career (and the life) that you want,” he said. “We thank our partners from Oracle, who have supported us since the establishment of the Master's program, and who are here with us for the moments of joy that mark your graduation.” We at Oracle Academy and Oracle look forward to the students’ continued success as they utilize their knowledge and degrees, fulfilling the strong demand for workers with database management skills.

Oracle Academy always celebrates students becoming career ready with expertise in database management. On June 19, 2018, the Faculty of Cybernetics, Statistics and Economic Informatics from Bucharest...

To reach 30,000 students over three years in Turkey, Oracle Academy partner the Turkish Private Schools Association has an ambition to educate more than 300 teachers on teaching object-oriented programming (Java) and database technologies. Turkish Private Schools Association, a current member of the European Council for Independent Schools Association (ECNAIS) and the European Council of International Schools (ECIS), has 1,103 members in 53 provinces throughout Turkey. The Association aims to encourage the Turkish private sector to invest in the field of education in order to provide a better quality educational environment for students. Two schools that are members of the association, Eyuboglu Schools, have started on this pathway by integrating the Oracle Academy Java Foundations curriculum into the Eyuboglu High School and Eyuboglu Science and Technology High School curriculum. IT teachers of Eyuboglu Schools, who completed Oracle Academy teacher training in 2017, now have successfully implemented the Oracle Academy Java Foundations course throughout the 2017-18 academic year. Students who successfully completed this course received course completion certificates at a recent ceremony. Eyuboglu Schools are the first CIS Accredited Turkish schools in Turkey, and the first Turkish school authorized to offer the three International Baccalaureate programs: the IB Primary Years Program, IB Middle Years Program, and IB Diploma Program. The schools focus on academic excellence, international understanding, inter-culturalism, and social awareness. Leadership of Eyuboglu Schools issued a statement saying, “We’re proud to contribute to the success of ‘innovators of tomorrow’ through our computer science education resources.” Also in Turkey, Oracle Academy in collaboration with the Ministry of National Education of Turkey (MONE) and the General Directorsate of Secondary Education trained 120 IT teachers from 120 high schools across Turkey on Java Fundamentals to support the delivery of the new national IT curriculum in the classrooms. Training classes that took place in Afyon and Ankara provided the teachers with the opportunity to develop their Java programming skills and discover Alice and Greenfoot, two visual development environments that support early computer science learning. They also learned how to collaborate using these tools in their classrooms to grow their students' interest in computing. These trainings were also a great opportunity for teachers to meet, network and share experiences with other teachers on computing education. We are thrilled to have joined forces with MONE to make our Oracle Academy learning resources available to all participating high schools to support raising digitally-skilled future generations who are using/producing technology safely and responsibly.  Students becoming skilled in computing is vital for economic growth,  research and development and innovation in all industries locally and globally.      

To reach 30,000 students over three years in Turkey, Oracle Academy partner the Turkish Private Schools Association has an ambition to educate more than 300 teachers on teaching object-oriented...

By Damian Haas, Regional Director, JAPAC More than 150 senior academics from 85 universities and vocational colleges across Indonesia attended an Oracle Academy Faculty Day on July 26, 2018. The event provided higher education professionals with an opportunity to explore how programs such as Oracle Academy help bridge the gap between what students are learning in their degree courses and what employers expect of them when they enter the workforce. A presentation by guest speaker Mohamad Rizal Arryadi, principal solution consultant for Oracle Cloud Applications, included insights into how technology advances are transforming our world, lives, industry, and workplaces.   The chief information officer of Indo-Rama Synthetics, Shailesh Thulaskar, provided information on industry expectations. He discussed what students need to know to bridge the gap from student learning to becoming an effective contributor in the workforce—including development of soft skills, knowledge of general industry domain (such as manufacturing, finance, retail, and the like), core IT skills such as coding and database, and select computer specialist knowledge, such as on big data or networking. Helping Educators Support Students Into the Workforce “Oracle Academy continues to support higher education institutions in Indonesia with programs and offerings that help educators build a compelling curriculum and syllabus to support their students’ pathways into the workforce,” says Damian Haas, regional director for Oracle Academy, APAC. “In 2018, Oracle Academy trained more than 1,200 educators across Indonesia on how to incorporate the free Oracle Academy program curriculum into their classrooms, and labs focusing on core programming and database skills that are in high demand across all industries,” he says. “At Oracle Academy, we believe in providing educators with the tools to help their students expand their skills and opportunities and chase their dreams,” said Nurul Huda, Oracle Academy country manager for Indonesia and Malaysia. “We are committed to providing educators with computer science teaching resources to support learning at all levels. These resources allow students to learn fundamental computer science concepts and develop their IT and business skills so they’ll be able to open career doors regardless of industry,” she says. “Through events such as Oracle Academy Faculty Days, we help educators keep pace with current technology and bring industry authenticity to classroom experiences through free, ongoing professional development,” Huda says. In addition to Faculty Days, Oracle Academy offers a wealth of training opportunities for educators in a variety of formats, including online and in-person training and workshops. Learn more.

By Damian Haas, Regional Director, JAPAC More than 150 senior academics from 85 universities and vocational colleges across Indonesia attended an Oracle Academy Faculty Day on July 26, 2018. The event...

To continue in our support of K-12 educators, on June 18, 2018, Oracle Academy was a proud sponsor of the third annual WeTeach_CS Summit, in Georgetown, Texas, organized by The University of Texas at Austin’s Center for STEM Education. Created specifically to help K-12 CS educators, the summit offered a lineup of national speakers, panel discussions, and breakout sessions to support computer science education. Cassi Elliott, North America Regional Marketing Specialist, Oracle Academy, assisted in presenting the UT Austin Computer Science Change Maker and Administrator Awards, sponsored by Oracle Academy. The UT CS Change Maker Awards were presented to eight Texas high school CS teachers who have made significant impacts on his/her students or the community through CS instruction. Each teacher received an award of $750. The UT Austin Administrator Awards recognize the contributions of administrators who have gone above and beyond to help expand CS education in their schools, districts, and communities. Additionally, Oracle Academy Curriculum Developer Lisa Palombo hosted a session featuring our newest workshop, focused on Bloodhound. This workshop incorporates real-life scenarios around the world’s fastest car and encourages students to learn object-oriented programming by coding in a Java language. Learn more about the Bloodhound project or any of our other workshops on our website. Oracle is proud to support and partner with educators as we work to bring computer science to all students, everywhere. Congratulations to the award winners, and thank you for making a difference!

To continue in our support of K-12 educators, on June 18, 2018, Oracle Academy was a proud sponsor of the third annual WeTeach_CS Summit, in Georgetown, Texas, organized by The University of Texas at...

Oracle Academy was selected as the winner of the Digital Skills Award in Spain, in the “Digital Skills in Education” category. The award was announced on June 20 at the Forum for the Development of Digital Talent, an event organized by AMETIC, a major employer in the Spanish technological and digital industry. Oracle Academy was chosen as the winner over other formidable finalists in the category, including Samsung and Salesforce. AMETIC selected 20 finalists out of 83 projects presented in the first edition of the Digital Skills Awards Spain 2018. These awards, created in the framework of the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition of the European Commission, aim to recognize and reward projects that boost skills and talent development within the industry and education, digital transformation, smart cities, and training in digital competencies. Judges for this prestigious award were representatives of the European Commission, Spanish Public Administration, business leaders, and the main stakeholders of the Spanish Digital Ecosystem. They looked at a series of variables such as scalability, replicability, originality, and clarity of the presentation. The Oracle4Girls initiative also was a finalist in the 2018 awards in the "Digital Competencies for Women and Girls" category. This prestigious Digital Skills in Education award recognizes the strong and ongoing work of Oracle Academy to foster growth in computer science education within Spain. This award was made possible by Oracle Academy and Oracle teamwork within Spain and EMEA by Angel Bellas, Oracle Academy program manager for Spain (featured in photo), Anna Moreu, Fabián Gradolph, Beatriz Herencia, Leopold Boado, and many other Oracle Spain colleagues who continuously support the work of Oracle Academy. An article on the award winners appeared in The Economist, Spain: http://www.eleconomista.es/ecoaula/noticias/9230191/06/18/Oracle-Academy-ganadora-de-los-Digital-Skills-Awards-Spain-2018.html  

Oracle Academy was selected as the winner of the Digital Skills Award in Spain, in the “Digital Skills in Education” category. The award was announced on June 20 at the Forum for the Development...

The XIX Virtual Educa was held in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, June 4-8, 2018, bringing together over 18,000 attendees, among them Secretaries of Education of Brazil, education representatives from various Latin American countries, Commissions of Education, Science and Technology of the Latin American Parliament, teachers, and students. Oracle Academy had the opportunity to sponsor this event, encouraging innovation in computer science education across Latin America and Caribbean schools to generate a positive impact in local communities and help create better opportunities for students. The strategic importance of education in the plural societies of the 21st century was discussed during the five days of the event, where Oracle Academy led a conversation around computer science education at the Global Forum. I had the opportunity to present Oracle Academy initiatives as well as best practices in education. During the event, we also delivered five short Alice 3D programming workshops, working with more than 150 teachers learning how to program objects in Alice. They enjoyed creating stories with 3D programming and shared their experience with the participants. Teachers also had the opportunity to learn more about Oracle Academy and the free computer science education resources we provide. We also had the opportunity to speak directly with more than 360 teachers and students who attended Vitual Educa. Fabiana Valente, Oracle Academy Brazil Manager, and Liliana Vargas, Oracle Academy Operations and Marketing Manager, represented Oracle Academy and lead conversations regarding membership, curriculum offerings, and diversity initiatives to encourage young students to discover CS education.   Oracle Academy also had the opportunity to meet the Federal Senator and Secretary of Education of Bahia State, Mr. Walter Pinheiro. We discussed the importance of computer science education for students in Brazil and the work of Oracle Academy. Oracle Academy is proud to be part of the XIX Virtual Educa, the most important event in education and innovation in Latin America and the Caribbean. As a key part of our mission, Oracle Academy encourages the inclusion of computer science education for teachers and students across classrooms in Latin America and the Caribbean to drive knowledge, innovation, skills development and diversity in technology fields.  

The XIX Virtual Educa was held in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, June 4-8, 2018, bringing together over 18,000 attendees, among them Secretaries of Education of Brazil, education representatives...

Recently, Oracle Academy was recognized for its outstanding contributions to the Greek educational system and corporate citizenship with three of the country’s top awards: Gold Impact Bite Award 2018 for Corporate Citizenship Initiatives Silver Education Leaders Award 2018 for Digital Education Bronze Education Leaders Awards 2018 for Innovation in Education In June, Oracle Academy was awarded the Gold Impact Bite Award 2018 for Corporate Citizenship Initiatives, specifically, Oracle Academy’s activities and contribution to the Greek educational system. It is the second year in a row that Oracle Academy receive the highest award in this category in the most prestigious awards of the ICT industry in Greece, demonstrating the Oracle Academy program’s continuity and consistency in the country. Impact Bite (Business IT Excellence) Awards are the most impactful business IT awards in Greece, organized by the leading B2B publishing company, Boussias Communications, in cooperation with ELTRUN, the E-Business Research Center of the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB). The annual awards have been granted for the past seven years and are acknowledged by all major ICT institutions of the country. At the 2018 ceremony, more than 550 senior ICT executives from major companies in Greece celebrated excellence, learned from best practices, and networked with peers.   In May, Oracle Academy was twice recognized for its contributions to the Greek educational system during the Education Leaders Awards, receiving the Silver Award for Digital Education and the Bronze Award for Innovation in Education. This is the third year in a row that Oracle Academy was recognized in the Education Awards; Oracle Academy received an additional six awards in various categories in 2016 and 2017. The Education Leaders Awards recognize educational organizations that systematically invest and innovate, so the human capital of Greece may bring to society wisdom, knowledge, skills, talents, and inspiration leading to innovation and progress. More than 350 educational organizations and companies from Greece and Cyprus participated in the awards. On behalf of Oracle Academy, all three of these awards were accepted by and made possible by the hard work of Eleni Tsipa, public relations and corporate citizenship specialist for Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo (GCMM) cluster, Oracle.

Recently, Oracle Academy was recognized for its outstanding contributions to the Greek educational system and corporate citizenship with three of the country’s top awards: Gold Impact Bite Award 2018...

In celebration of the first ever Digital Literacy Day in Toronto, Ontario, Oracle Academy, along with Oracle Toronto, conducted workshops for K12 students on May 31 at the Toronto Public Library as part of a series of more than 110 free events and workshops for all ages. Oracle Academy offered beginning programming – Getting Started with Java Using Alice Workshop in a Box – at three different library sites. Educators brought classrooms of K-12 students to participate in this digital learning opportunity. The program included guided learning sessions with Oracle Academy Curriculum Manager Lisa Palombo and Executive Director of Alice, Carnegie Mellon, Eric Brown, with support provided by Oracle Volunteers and coordinated by Shazia Hemraj: David Ahchong Alan Chin Sabrina Feng Marium Ibrahim Ranjith Kuduva Amanpreet Singh Adeline Wong Many of the students who attended the Oracle Academy workshops had never had any exposure to any computer programming before the Digital Learning Day event. “The goal, in participating in this amazing event, was to ensure the students’ first experience with computing was fun and engaging,” says Tyra Crockett, Oracle Academy senior manager, North America. “I felt very proud and inspired teaching grade 8 students computer science using Alice for their first time,” says Marium Ibrahim, customer success manager, Oracle Toronto. Smart Cities Digital Literacy Day Toronto is part of the Smart Cities Initiative. The Toronto Public Library hosted 78 events in 49 branches, and Mayor John Tory and the Toronto City Council proclaimed May 31 as Digital Literacy Day. The event was established by Councillor Michelle Holland, the City’s Advocate for an Innovation Economy. “With the rapid pace that technology is transforming our workplaces and social spaces, digital literacy is a critical skill set to learn in order to capitalize on these changes,” said Holland. “It’s vital that we future-proof our workforce and provide ample opportunities for the public to learn digital skills to ensure that no one is left behind in the innovation economy.” Tory noted, “We are a tech leader in Canada and throughout the world, and it is important that we continue to be competitive in this area. Fostering digital literacy now and in the future is essential for us to maintain our city's prosperity and livability.” Digital Literacy is Key Events and workshops raised awareness of what digital literacy means and skills that are required in areas such as coding, digital privacy, digital banking, design, video editing robotics and other tech career areas. Discussions explored career options and how digital literacy impacts work environments and accessibility.  “The Toronto Digital Literacy Day was an amazing experience and was a great way for the youth to combine technology and imagination. It truly allowed them to let their creative minds run wild, and the Alice application provided the blank canvas for their art piece,” says Amanpreet Singh, client success specialist, Oracle. Franco Amalfi, director of Innovation, Oracle Public Sector North America, says, “With a strong presence in Toronto, Oracle Canada was pleased to support this innovative event. We thank our staff who volunteered their time and talent to introduce students to programming. One of our goals is to help Toronto youth build their computer science skills so they can enjoy the fun of coding and be better prepared for the digital economy.” Digital Literacy Day was the result of the City of Toronto and the Toronto Public Library collaborating with a diverse group of more than 35 partners in the academic, arts, corporate and non-profit communities to produce and host digital literacy-themed events throughout the city. Toronto recognizes that digital access and digital literacy are critical for living and working in today’s knowledge economy. Oracle and Oracle Volunteers were pleased to support this innovative initiative.

In celebration of the first ever Digital Literacy Day in Toronto, Ontario, Oracle Academy, along with Oracle Toronto, conducted workshops for K12 students on May 31 at the Toronto Public Library as...

International Girls in ICT Day is an initiative backed by all International Telecommunications Union member states. The event, which takes place each year on the fourth Thursday in April, aims to create a global environment that empowers and encourages girls and young women to consider car​eers in tech, enabling both girls and technology companies to reap the benefits of greater female participation in the ICT sector. This years’ event took place on April 26, 2018, with numerous events held during that week. To date, over 300,000 young women have taken part in more than 9,000 celebrations of International Girls in ICT Day in 166 countries worldwide. As part of its mission to promote diversity in computer science fields, Oracle Academy was proud to support Girls in ICT in Latin America with events in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru that featured Oracle leaders, including speakers from Oracle and the Oracle Women Lead group. More than 700 young women participated. Following are highlights from the week’s events. Brazil       More than 60 young women students from the nonprofit Gerando Falcões e Recode, SENAC Vocational and Technical School, and Kroton Universities came together at Oracle Brazil, Sao Paulo, to enthusiastically discuss with industry leaders the real benefits and challenges of STEM and computer science careers. A panel discussion on “Women in Tech” was headed by leading IT industry professionals, including Francislaine Muratorio, Oracle VP of Alliances & Channels; Priscila Siqueira, Oracle Digital VP; and Dr. Luciana Allan, Ph.D. Education, a specialist in technology education and executive director of Instituto Crescer para Cidadania. The panel addressed the importance of learning computer science and the role of women in the tech industry, illustrated with success stories. It was moderated by Fernando Lemos, Oracle VP of Technology. A separate group discussion led by Rodrigo Galvão, Managing Director of Oracle Brazil, addressed future opportunities and IT career pathways.   Chile Oracle Chile hosted a group of 20 secondary school girls from Santiago school Chile Liceo Comercial B72 to celebrate Girls in ICT day. Oracle Academy coordinated this event in conjunction with Programa tus Ideas Chile, which encourages children to learn about technology. During this event, the girls had the opportunity to learn more about Oracle Academy program offerings, technology trends, and development opportunities in computer science. The event was hosted by Maria Locatelli, OU Global Operations Sr. Manager for Latin America and Oracle Academy Country Manager. Costa Rica To encourage young women to choose science and technology for their future and professional growth, Oracle Academy led a Girls in Technology Day celebration with a group of 60 students from the Miravalle School in Cartago. The event, celebrating knowledge, inspiration, and innovation, featured exciting projects including a 3D programming workshop using Alice, and an inspirational discussion on the role of women in technology and guest speakers’ experience in the field. Volunteering guidance and information on their experience were special guests Dr. Gabriela Marín, Director of the Master in Computing program at the University of Costa Rica; Oreana Rodríguez Recio, Oracle Human Resources Senior Manager; Diana Blanco Gonzalez, Oracle Central America Field Marketing Manager, and Rodolfo Yglesias Piza, Oracle Sales Consultant, who led the Alice workshop. Special thanks to Richard Delgado Cascante, Oracle Senior Director, Alliances & Channels M&A, for his support and leadership of this engaging event. Colombia In Bogotá, 51 young women from Gustavo Morales Morales Public School enjoyed and event that featured learning, inspiration, innovation, and networking. In the day’s events was a talk, “Get on my cloud,” by Monica Yepes Osorio, Oracle Digital Sales Director, who shared the importance of dreaming big, recognizing their own potential, and making the most of opportunities for professional and personal development for the future. A conversation on women in ICT was led by Carlos Sarmiento Guevara, Oracle Digital Senior Vice President, and Monica Lopez, President of the Technology and Talent department at SENA, the National Vocational Training Agency of Colombia, which focuses on developing the workforce of the future. In the workshop “I can be,” higher education access and financing were addressed by Clara Cardona, representing the Colombia Ministry of Education. The day ended with a mentoring session where girls developed teamwork and communication skills, and a networking lunch with Oracle employees. Additionally, an event was held in Medellín at Universidad de Medellin, with more than 280 participants from public schools. Oracle Academy partnered with  Alianza Futuro Digital Medellín, Ruta N and Intersoftware to provide a day filled with talks, connection with computer science universities and colleges, and a fun outdoor picnic where the girls had the opportunity to exchange ideas and learn more about CS careers. Ecuador In collaboration with CITIC—the Centro Internacional de Investigación Científica en Telecomunicaciones, Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones—Oracle Academy Ecuador celebrated Girls in ICT with more than 200 students in Quito. The objective was to inspire girls to study computer science and technology and consider careers in the ICT sector, where women are underrepresented. Activities included a workshop in which students developed 3D models with Alice, educational software that helps teach computer programming to youth with no prior knowledge. The Oracle Academy-CITIC partnership program alliance in Ecuador support 9,000 students, 650 computer science educators from 76 higher education institutions (including universities, polytechnic schools and technological institutes), 157 secondary schools, and 24 mega-infocenters of the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Society (MINTEL). Mexico Oracle Academy held a Girls In ICT event in the offices of Oracle de México, Mexico City, welcoming 34 students and two educators from the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP). During the day, the students learned about work dynamics within Oracle from inspiring Oracle Mexico leaders who volunteered their time, including Javier Cordero, Jose Luis Varela, Corinne Garcia, Silvia Diaz, Aide Bernal, Ana Lucia Moraes, Patricia Cardenas, and Alejandra Malvaez. These volunteers dedicated their time to inspire the students to continue their studies and provided a wide view of the different areas of computer science in which they could develop their skills to work in the future. Oracle Academy Mexico is proud to provide free software, training and resources to more than 350 educational institutions within the country.   Peru Together with San Ignacio de Loyola University, Lima, Oracle Academy organized an event that more than 40 young women students attended to learn more about developing their professional careers in the technology field. Seminar topics included digital transformation and the power of data. The girls and volunteers from Oracle Women Lead (OWL) and Oracle also took part in a discussion panel and conversation regarding empowering women in IT. Special thanks to the Oracle team who volunteered their time and talent to make this event a success: Andrea Alvarez Soto, Senior Sales Consultant for LAD TECH Presales & Overlay; Juan Pablo Guizado Serrano, Enterprise Architect Public Sector; and Chiarella Bencan, Sales Consulting Manager. Promoting diversity in computer science fields is a key part of the mission of Oracle Academy. We look forward to continuing our global efforts to help educate young women learn more about computer science and career options in technology fields. Learn more about our work to bring computer science to all at academy.oracle.com.  

International Girls in ICT Day is an initiative backed by all International Telecommunications Union member states. The event, which takes place each year on the fourth Thursday in April, aims to...

At the 2018 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) event on May 17, Oracle Academy presented US$5,000 scholarship awards to each of ten talented winners who had embedded computer science into their abstracts in the system software category. The Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, a program of Society for Science & the Public, is the world’s largest international pre-college science competition. Through a global network of local, regional, and national science fairs, millions of students are encouraged to explore their passion for developing innovations that improve the way we work and live. Each May, a group of these students is selected as finalists and offered the opportunity to compete for approximately US$5 million in awards and scholarships. This year’s event took place May 13-18 in Pittsburgh and featured inventions from nearly 800 young innovators. Oracle Academy awards were presented by Oracle Academy’s Danielle Ferretti, Manager, Suite Academy. Finalists were selected by the following judges from the Pittsburgh area, all who volunteered their time and have technical backgrounds. Lead judge, Bruce Regittko, Principal Instructor, Oracle Academy Christine Falconer, Risk Management Director, Oracle Sharjeel Farooq, Technology Sales Representative, Oracle David Pawloski, Solution Architect, Oracle Vasu Rao, Director, Product Strategy for Software Support Development, Oracle Daniel Abeshouse, Carnegie Mellon University Farooq said, “This was my first time attending/judging this event. I was blown away with the talent I saw. It was simply an amazing experience.” Judges were required to be science, engineering and industry professionals who hold a Ph.D. or equivalent (six years of related professional experience) or are senior graduate students with doctoral-level research in one of the 22 scientific disciplines in which projects fall. And the Winners Are… Fair finalists in all categories were selected from 420 affiliate fairs in 81 countries, regions and territories. Oracle Academy Award winners of $5,000 for outstanding project in the systems software category were: Background Noise Reduction by Using Spectral Selection to Remove Unneeded Frequencies Kevin Xiao, Tuscaloosa, AL – Alabama School of Mathematics and Science, Teacher Grey Gaillard A Sensor-Enhanced Digital Stethoscope (SEDS): Design and Development of an Intelligent Sensor-Enhanced Digital Stethoscope for Patient-Friendly Remote Auscultation Syamantak Payra, Friendswood, TX – Clear Brook High School, Teacher Alaina Garza Using SONAR, LIDAR, and Computer Vision to Assist the Visually-Impaired Samuel Cadotte, Kailua, HI – Kalaheo High School, Teacher Crystal Stafford Implementing Deep Learning Techniques to Detect Abnormal Cells Gaurav Behera, Rochester, MN – Century High School, Teacher Janelle Milliken Creation of a Mobile Application to Enhance Communication in Children with Autism Joshua Santiago-Ibarra, Trujillo Alto, PR – Escuela Especializada en Ciencias, Matemáticas y Tecnología, Teacher Jenipher Gonzalez TreLop Javid and Jeyla Huseynzade, Baku, Azerbaijan – Lyceum Academician Zarifa Aliyev, Teacher Vugar Huseynli AzureVoice: A Novel Approach for the Early Detection of Parkinson's Disease Using Android Apps and Artificial Intelligence Koushik Sridhar, Charlotte, NC – Ardrey Kell High School, Teacher Rachel Robinson Wireless Brainwave Classification for Alzheimer's Patients via Efficient Neural Network Computation Grant Sheen, Irvine, CA – Sage Hill School, Teacher Annalise Miyashiro Utilizing Blockchain to Revolutionize Privacy and Security of Medical Records Divya Amirtharaj, Beaverton, OR – Westview High School, Teacher Debbie Cooper Pawloski said, “These impressive students represent hope for our world’s future and I’m so proud to have had a small role, representing Oracle, Pittsburgh and higher education.”   Innovators Solving Global Challenges Guided by the belief that advances in science and engineering are key to solving global challenges, Society for Science & the Public has organized and produced this competition since it was founded in 1950 as the National Science Fair. Intel took on title sponsorship of the International Science and Engineering Fair in 1997 as part of an effort to bring greater attention to science, technology, engineering, and math achievement, encourage more youth to embrace these fields, and highlight the impact these subjects have on the future of innovation. Maya Ajmera, President & CEO of the Society for Science & the Public and Publisher of Science News, said, “The innovative ideas presented at Intel ISEF demonstrate the power of scientific curiosity and the desire for all of our finalists to make the world a better place.” “I regularly mentor graduate and post-graduate future entrepreneurs—and I was astonished and impressed by the professionalism, maturity and expertise demonstrated by these high school students,” Rao said. “This filled my heart with hope for the future of this world with so many developing bright minds trying to make a positive impact with their innovation and enthusiasm,” he said. “I’ll look forward to more such events sponsored by Oracle Academy. We, Oracle, as a company, definitely need to do more to encourage the younger generation to use Oracle technologies by providing them with the tools and platform they need to develop these ideas.” Falconer said, “I felt lucky to be there and to represent Oracle; we are fortunate to have leaders who believe in investing in the future,” she said. “A moment I would like to share: As I walked down a long, empty corridor with a large wall display of all the hundreds of ISEF finalist names listed with their “Think Beyond” motto, I came upon someone who was sitting alone on a bench contemplatively looking at the display. I stopped to ask if she was a finalist. She immediately got up and pointed to her name, and said she was representing the Philippines. Her actions and words spoke of honor, appreciation and self-satisfaction of coming this far. I walked away feeling that she will make a difference in this world… like so many others there.”  As Oracle’s flagship philanthropic educational program, Oracle Academy advances computer science education globally to drive knowledge, innovation, skills development, and diversity in technology fields. Supporting more than 3.5 million students annually in 120 countries, the program works with public and private partners to provide the tools educators need to engage, inspire and prepare students to become innovators and leaders of the future. Content submitted by: Rebecca Dinan Schneider

At the 2018 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) event on May 17, Oracle Academy presented US$5,000 scholarship awards to each of ten talented winners who had embedded computer...

Our Oracle Academy Country Program Manager, Camelia Ditescu (pictured), was invited to present to the Romania Oracle User Group on 22 May, 2018. At the event, Romanian User Group members had the opportunity to discuss the benefits and key aspects of the Oracle Academy program, and most importantly, understand how they may become engaged with the dedicated teachers and and students who are learning our curriculum in university and school. Of particular interest was how in Romania we try to be much closer to the students by providing extracurricular technical workshops, or by mentoring students with their university teachers for a better understanding of the technologies. Many Oracle User Group members are the "employers of the future" for our students, and attendees were encouraged to know that many of these students will be leaving university with Oracle-based knowledge and skills.  

Our Oracle Academy Country Program Manager, Camelia Ditescu (pictured), was invited to present to the Romania Oracle User Group on 22 May, 2018. At the event, Romanian User Group members had the...

We are proud to announce the winners of a new Java competition for university students, which was launched by our Oracle Academy partner Adfaber, and designed to give every Romanian student the opportunity to create solutions that could change society for the better through technology. Students from universities across Romania used Java programming to make their world a better place, under the theme of "The Smart City." Students were invited to develop applications that make their city a smart one using Java and Oracle Database technologies. In total 35 teams registered for the competition, submitting over 20 valid projects. The top four teams had the opportunity to present their projects to the jury and were awarded prizes by Adfaber and Oracle Academy at a ceremony held at the Oracle office in Romania. The winners of the competition are:  In first place: Tufa Adriana and Boicu Ionut, who presented their "Recycle Quest" project, an incentive for recycling. "Such a platform does not exist, and we strongly believe it would improve the recycling rate, at least among the younger population," Adriana said. Recycle Quest is a platform that was built with the goal of inspiring and encouraging more people to recycle, a problem that deserves much more attention. "Not only does it facilitate the entire recycling process, but also encourages its users to recycle more often through benefits offered in the platform that stimulate recycling," said the winners.  In second place: The SPark - A Community-Driven Smart Parking project, presented by Mercea Otniel-Bogdan and Baban Gabriel. "The project aims to solve a problem faced by most modern cities, namely the management of parking spaces in an efficient way. Practically, community members make available to their fellow residents the parking spaces they own, for periods when they are unused, to optimize the use of this critical resource." team members said. The solution consists of a mobile application backed by a Java EE complex back-end, through which citizens of a city can view and reserve real-time parking spaces free at any time of the day in an interactive and dynamic way. In third place: An ambitious project that aims to digitally transform hospitals in Romania and improve the experience of doctors and patients. The project, conducted by Nedelcu Stefan-Daniel, is a system for medical data management of patients. "Physicians, in formulating a diagnosis, rely exclusively on anamnesis (patient recollection), on hospital archives, or on patient papers. With a centralized system available, this information can be accessed from a central server, knowing with certainty the patient's medical history. Nowadays, the lack of digitization of the system hinders the medical act, and the access to information is very difficult," said Stefan-Daniel. I am so pleased that Oracle Academy is continuing its collaboration with Adfaber in advancing computer science skills in Romania. The Java competition for universities challenges students to use technology in ways that can improve their local communities and have a positive impact on society.

We are proud to announce the winners of a new Java competition for university students, which was launched by our Oracle Academy partner Adfaber, and designed to give every Romanian student...

With the aim of continuing to help build IT educational strategy and growth, on 29 May, 2018, Oracle Academy participated in an IT conference organized by the University at the Intera Technology Park in Mostar, which was attended by Ministers of Education from several counties in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The objective of the conference was to present the IT strategy of the university, strengthen partnerships with the IT industry, and encourage the development of the University Computing Centre (SUMIT) to create a network of connected primary and secondary schools from four counties in the region. Situated in the cultural and economic capital of the Herzegovina region and world-known for its famous Old Bridge, the University of Mostar hosts 14.000 students, 1,000 lecturers and 50 different majors. It is now the fastest growing university in Bosnia and Herzegovina and an Oracle Academy member since December 2015. The university will host Oracle Academy training classes for teachers from across the region in the upcoming academic year 2018-2019. Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the fastest growing countries in terms of Oracle Academy memberships in Eastern Europe, with 45 new institutional members in the current academic year. Oracle Academy training classes have been held in other local cities such as Tuzla and Banja Luka. This invitation by the University of Mostar to participate in this vital conference is another important step in expanding our presence and positive cooperation with academic and educational communities in the region. Darko Jurekovic, Oracle Academy Program Manager, is featured on the University Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/svemo.ba/photos/a.448797058878606.1073741836.354920018266311/448857408872571/?type=3&theater). I look forward to sharing more good news from Bosnia and Herzegovina in the next academic year!  

With the aim of continuing to help build IT educational strategy and growth, on 29 May, 2018, Oracle Academy participated in an IT conference organized by the University at the Intera Technology Park...

An “Oracle Academy Open Doors" event recently was held at which former Oracle Academy students who now have jobs at Oracle provided mentorship to a new class of students from Colegiul National “Mircea cel Batran” Rm. Valcea, Romania. The event was held for the third time. The event was organized to celebrate the fact that Colegiul National “Mircea cel Batran” Rm. Valcea have been members of Oracle Academy for over 10 years, supported by IT teacher Miana Arisanu, who has six former students now working at Oracle, Romania. These "Oracle Academy alumni" were pleased to share their experiences with the current students from their former high school. All 41 participants visited the local Oracle office to learn more about Oracle, Oracle Academy benefits and how “curiosity did NOT kill the cat” – how important it is to be curious. Our experience in hosting these events for the last three years has shown how important it is for new students to learn face to face from former students how to prepare themselves for a career in the IT field, to keep in touch for more information, and to benefit from their experiences working at Oracle. “The amount of information was quite large. I enjoyed every moment spent at Oracle Romania, where I met wonderful people whom I’d like to meet again in the future,” said student Alexandra Voicila, 10th grade. “The experience gained from visiting Oracle Romania made me think a lot about my future, and I enjoyed every moment spent there,” said student Dragos Spiridon. “I was pleasantly surprised by the way we were welcomed and by the information received during this visit, especially those about the extracurricular activities in which we should engage in order to grow in our careers,” said student Francesco Petrovici. "This visit represented a unique chance for our students to interact with employees from IT field, in such an important company. Besides the extremely useful advice that they received about certifications, involvement and encouragement to follow their passions, they had the opportunity to visit several departments and to speak with Oracle Romania employees," said Antonia Haller, IT teacher at CN Mircea cel Batran, Rm.Valcea. "All the students were delighted by the visit, impressed by the opening and the warmth with which they were welcomed, and motivated by the discussions held with Oracle Romania employees.”

An “Oracle Academy Open Doors" event recently was held at which former Oracle Academy students who now have jobs at Oracle provided mentorship to a new class of students from Colegiul National “Mircea...

Over 350 students from Iasi County in Romania came together to learn more about Oracle and Oracle Academy benefits, and to hear how important our technologies are, directly from Oracle Romania Iasi colleagues. We are grateful for the time and effort from our colleagues, who interacted with students during the course of three dedicated presentations and two workshops outlining the main elements of the Database and Cloud features provided by Oracle. From 25 April through 18 May 2018, Oracle Academy was involved in three events in the city of Iasi county, namely "IT Marathon", “Days of the Electronics Student", and "Student Scientific Symposium" at the Faculty of Computer Engineering and Automatic Control. With the help from our colleagues at Oracle Romania, Iasi County, Oracle Academy can build closer bonds with our Iasi university students and student associations. At the three events students were interested to learn about Oracle Academy Database and Java curriculum and how they can implement all this knowledge in day-to-day work as technical engineers in the IT domain. “Sustained by Oracle Academy curricula, the students, who defined themselves as 'the new generation who will re-architect IT' were encouraged to extend and develop their critical knowledge of key topics and trends in hardware (processors and storage) and software (OS, database, cloud, Java). My personal message for professors and students in Iasi is to better work together by becoming more strategic in our efforts for better education offerings”, said Gabriel Amarandei, Manager, Customer Support, DB Admin, Sup – DBS Foundation, EMEA. Our thanks go to all our Oracle colleagues in Romania for their time and enthusiastic support to our Oracle Academy students, and to Camelia Ditescu, Oracle Academy Program manager for Romania, for organizing these fantastic events!  

Over 350 students from Iasi County in Romania came together to learn more about Oracle and Oracle Academy benefits, and to hear how important our technologies are, directly from Oracle Romania Iasi...

On 23 May, 2018, Frane Urem, (pictured) Vice-Dean at the Polytechnic of Šibenik and Oracle Academy Instructor in Croatia, presented a paper on Oracle Academy activities in Croatia to the Croatian Society for Information and Communication Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics (MIPRO) at its International Convention. In his presentation, Frane emphasized that “in the field of European and Croatian education, the objective of digital competencies development for all citizens is particularly emphasized” and that in achieving this goal, the key stakeholders are teachers of informatics for whom the contemporary rapid development of information technologies poses great challenges in the field of their professional development. As the self-assessment of 126 respondents demonstrated, that of range of professional development programs offered to them by the Education and Teacher Training Agency (ETTA), Oracle Academy with its curricula, software and training resources matches their development needs well. In light of the ongoing curricular reform in Croatian schools which puts emphasis on ICT and computer science, Oracle Academy is on the right track with its resources, which will continue to expand in the upcoming academic year. The paper that Frane presented at the convention also will be indexed by IEEE Xplore digital library, available on http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/home.jsp.  

On 23 May, 2018, Frane Urem, (pictured) Vice-Dean at the Polytechnic of Šibenik and Oracle Academy Instructor in Croatia, presented a paper on Oracle Academy activities in Croatia to the Croatian...

Coolest Projects is an annual global STEM showcase that inspires the next generation of digital creators, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Orlaith Lawton, Senior Marketing Manager EMEA, (pictured) representing Oracle Academy took a tour into the future with Oracle Academy member Raspberry Pi on Saturday, 26 May, at the RDS in Dublin.  More than 1,000 young people participated from across Ireland as well as 15 additional countries, including Argentina, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, and Japan. Kids ages 7-17 had the opportunity to showcase over 700 coding projects created at their local CoderDojo, Code Club and Raspberry Jam clubs. Projects varied in content and format from apps, personalised websites, interactive games, and hardware projects.  Flying drones, STEM escape rooms, a minecraft server, a 3D snake with ping pong balls with LED lights inside, and helping robots were all part of the fun! Enthusiastic parents and volunteers also took part in the event, including many Oracle staff such as Turloch O’Tierney, Senior Member of Technical Staff, and Frank Bradley, EMEA Sales Communications Operations Lead. O’Tierney, who runs the Dublin 3 CoderDojo in the Eastpoint Oracle office, is a regular attendee to the conference. His advice was to encourage the kids to talk fluently about their project to the judges. Bradley is assisting in organising the upcoming October 2018 Dojocon event which will take place in Kilkenny.  Learn more about CoolestProjects at  http://coolestprojects.org/project-registration-faqs/

Coolest Projects is an annual global STEM showcase that inspires the next generation of digital creators, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Orlaith Lawton, Senior Marketing Manager EMEA, (pictured)...

I had a very inspiring visit to MICA, the first international vocational school in Egypt, which welcomed the Oracle Academy team to visit their premises and see first-hand the impact Oracle Academy has had on their students and faculty. MICA is the first vocational/technical international school in Egypt to create and deliver a three-year diploma in computer programming. I am proud that the diploma course developed by MICA uses the entire Oracle Academy curriculum in Java and Database as its content.   Now in its second year of delivery, the diploma course is accredited by PVTD (Productivity, Vocational and Technical Development) under the Ministry of Industry for Egypt. During this visit, we had the chance to visit the classrooms, tour the labs, and meet with students who have come from all parts of Cairo to study at MICA. It was interesting to see the projects created by the students who study computer programming and discuss with them their future plans for developing a career in the technology sector, and their interest in professional certifications. MICA faculty have attended two Oracle Academy training classes run by our EMEA instructor Gary Miller, who delivered the training in April 2018. We look forward to continuing to see the success of the diploma program and the students of MICA! 

I had a very inspiring visit to MICA, the first international vocational school in Egypt, which welcomed the Oracle Academy team to visit their premises and see first-hand the impact Oracle Academy...

It was with great pleasure that I recently attended an Oracle Academy Day and roundtable discussion with our members from colleges and universities in Jordan. Attended by faculty from some of our key universities in Jordan, it was good to hear how they are using our Oracle Academy curriculum in their degree granting courses and how some of them are creating their own Oracle Academy Clubs for students to share their experiences and learn with each other. The session provided an opportunity for our members to hear from our Oracle Academy program manager in MEA, Ola Ramadan, about Oracle Academy program benefits and updates. The discussions were lively and gave me an understanding of how Oracle Academy can continue to develop our program to meet the changing needs of faculty and their students. We discussed how we can work with our members to map our curriculum to local learning outcomes to facilitate the delivery of learning and Oracle Academy curriculum content in the academic sector. It was great to have our colleagues from the Oracle Jordan local team deliver interesting presentations on different topics such as "Insights for Business Transformation using Oracle Big Data and Cloud Analytics", and "The Next Big Things: AI, Machine Learning, Chatbots, and Blockchain." Many thanks go to Raed Hajarat, Country Manager, Jordan, Sultan AlKilani, Cloud Domain Sales Consultant, and Dr. Mutaz M. Al-Debei, Principal Cloud Platform Consultant,  Big Data & Business Analytics, at Oracle for their inspiring presentations to our members.            

It was with great pleasure that I recently attended an Oracle Academy Day and roundtable discussion with our members from colleges and universities in Jordan. Attended by faculty from some of our key...

Content provided by Danielle Ferretti This May, I had the pleasure of attending the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Each year, Intel ISEF hosts nearly 2,000 students from around the world as they showcase their research and compete for prizes and this year, I had the privilege attending and seeing them in action. Oracle Academy sponsored nine $5,000 scholarships and invited a team of Oracle volunteers to serve as judges at the event. During my visit, I had the chance to meet some of the judges and walk through the exhibit halls to view the students' work. There were two giant rooms filled wall-to-wall with exhibits! The exhibit categories ranged from environmental studies to mathematics to robotics (and everything in between!) I saw some incredible research projects ranging from early disease detection to climate change solutions. It was a far cry from my volcano science experiment days and was both humbling and inspiring to witness such young, bright minds at work. The most exciting part of the day, however, was the special awards ceremony where sponsors such as Oracle Academy had the opportunity to present their awards to the students. I was totally blown away by the entire production! The arena was filled to capacity and the stage was complete with special lighting, professional cameras and energetic music. It was like the Oscars of Science Fairs! I got on stage to present the nine awards on behalf of Oracle Academy, and it was so fun to watch the students run full speed to the stage after hearing their names called. They were so excited and so grateful. We took some photos backstage and wished them luck in their future endeavors – because they truly are our future!  

Content provided by Danielle Ferretti This May, I had the pleasure of attending the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Each year, Intel ISEF hosts...

Oracle Academy was delighted to participate in the Java Day Istanbul 2018 conference held on 5 May, 2018, with over 800 participants. The conference is one of the most effective international community-driven software conferences in Turkey, organized by Istanbul Java User Group. It helps developers learn more about the newest technologies in Java, web, mobile, big data, cloud, DevOps, Agile and Future, as well as establishing solid networks. We had the opportunity to be a part of this fantastic conference and meet developers, startups, tech companies and academics at the Oracle Academy booth hosted by our Oracle Academy Program Manager for Turkey, Sena Aydogan (pictured below). An interesting roundtable session was run by Oracle’s Cloud Digital Expert on current trends and future developments in Java and cloud.  This key conference was a great opportunity for Oracle Academy to showcase how we advance computer science education globally via our free resources, which range from curriculum in Java and database to training opportunities for educators and the new IoT Hands-On Labs. https://javaday.istanbul  

Oracle Academy was delighted to participate in the Java Day Istanbul 2018 conference held on 5 May, 2018, with over 800 participants. The conference is one of the most effective...

Oracle Academy is delighted to showcase a project developed by volunteers from our Romanian Oracle office representing different business lines, designed to support students from Oracle Academy member institutions to study more extensively Oracle technologies.  Oracle Romania has developed an Oracle Academy Club which has enrolled 20 students from five Bucharest universities, into which our colleagues in Romania bring their expertise and experience to discuss with students different subjects such as Database, WebLogic, Java, and last but not least, soft skills. The club has run for a period of three months, offering 14 different workshops of three hours each from January until the end of April 2018, all hosted at the Oracle Romania offices in Bucharest. At the end of this fantastic volunteer-led project, Oracle Academy Club students were proud to confirm that they now trust they could complete a project using database and Java, and understood how important it is for them that now they can mention in their CVs completion of the Java and database curriculum offered by Oracle Academy. In addition, they have had the opportunity to experience working in teams on various projects due to their participation in the Oracle Academy Club. “At the Oracle Academy Club, we aim to prepare our students for the moment they start to contribute to society’s prosperity. As they transition from full-time learning to delivering services or creating products, we bridge the gap from the theoretical IT training to the practical day-to-day work," said Bogdan Petcu, Director, Customer Support, Support - Enterprise Tools, Oracle. Students made use of Virtual Machines, where they explored SQL, webservers, web services and Java coding in a real-life environment, he said. They also participated in SCRUM-like meetings, learned professional communication skills, and for the first time ever, worked as part of a team rather than competing for points and awards. "Our goal is for every student to have a clear idea of what their dream job could be and how they can prepare themselves to reach it. We believe there is no greater difference one can make for the community, than making sure each of our generations has the best opportunity possible for finding motivating employment to enable a thriving economy,” Petcu said.  Oracle and Oracle Academy share pride in everyone involved in this great project!

Oracle Academy is delighted to showcase a project developed by volunteers from our Romanian Oracle office representing different business lines, designed to support students from Oracle Academy member...

Oracle Academy was pleased to take part in yet another outstanding Oracle User Group event in Europe, JavaCRO, an international conference organized by the Croatian Association of Java Users (HUJAK) and the Croatian Oracle User Group (HrOUG). This year the conference was held from May 7 to 9 at St. Andrew Island, next to the picturesque city of Rovinj in Croatia. The event was attended by more than 300 participants, with many newcomers, and importantly, young programmers, in attendance for the first time, a sign of how vibrant and healthy the Java community is in Croatia. JavaCRO is one of the largest Java conferences in Europe, hosting prominent Java experts from all around the world, including Oracle colleagues David Delebassee from Belgium, Duško Vukmanović from Croatia, and Marek Kratky from the Czech Republic. Oracle Academy was pleased to provide a presentation about our experiences in Eastern Europe; following the presentation there was a lively and interesting discussion between the audience and Darko Jureković, Oracle Academy Program Manager for 10 countries in Eastern Europe. Discussion topics included the decisions that contemporary students are facing when selecting Java as a programming language, and the challenges that the IT industry is facing across the region due to a lack of developers. This lack of talent means that many companies begin recruiting Java developers at the very beginning of their studies, as most students in their later years of study are already working while studying in parallel, and also are seeing opportunities outside of Croatia being open to them. This challenge to supply the IT workforce of the future is being addressed by Oracle Academy, which provides support through continued training of teachers in the country and engages with universities to support their use of free Oracle Academy curriculum, technology and learning resources.  http://2018.javacro.hr/eng/Program/Oracle-Academy-Java-EE-experiences-2015-2018    

Oracle Academy was pleased to take part in yet another outstanding Oracle User Group event in Europe, JavaCRO, an international conference organized by the Croatian Association of Java Users (HUJAK)...

We were delighted to be represented at the joint ITU and European Commission celebration of Girls in ICT Day 2018, which took place on 28 April, 2018, in Sofia, Bulgaria. The event also coincided with the new Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union. Bulgaria has one of the highest numbers of female participation in the ICT sector in Europe. This special occasion provided an opportunity for Oracle Academy to share and discuss how to achieve a higher share of female ICT specialists and identify Bulgarian best practices to be shared among other European countries. George Alexandrov, Country Leader, Oracle Bulgaria, who has over 15 years of experience in information and communication technology, represented Oracle at the role model panel discussion. We thank him for sharing his insights. International Girls in ICT Day is an initiative backed by all International Telecommunications Union member states. The event, which takes place each year on the fourth Thursday in April, aims to create a global environment that empowers and encourages girls and young women to consider car​eers in tech, enabling both girls and technology companies to reap the benefits of greater female participation in the ICT sector. This years’ event took place on April 26, 2018, with numerous events held during that week. To date, over 300,000 young women have taken part in more than 9,000 celebrations of International Girls in ICT Day in 166 countries worldwide.  http://www.digitaleurope.org     

We were delighted to be represented at the joint ITU and European Commission celebration of Girls in ICT Day 2018, which took place on 28 April, 2018, in Sofia, Bulgaria. The event also coincided with...

Oracle Academy in Italy attended the recent CLUSIT Security Summit in Milan, which was a huge success with over 1,200 participants.  Oracle Academy was represented by Roberta Battagli, Oracle Academy Program Manager, who emphasized the importance of Oracle Academy resources for institutes of higher education across Italy - not just in the computer science department, but across various disciplines. CLUSI offers an academic competition on its Thesis Award portal, with an emphasis on projects including security. This year, universities that offer law programs also have entered this prestigious competition.  Due to the success of the event, Oracle will attend the next CLUSIT Security Summit in Rome, June 7-8. We are looking forward to it! https://clusit.it/blog/newsletter-31032018/ https://www.securitysummit.it/event/Milano-2018/atti https://tesi.clusit.it/vincitori.php] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibeTwDJwAto&feature=youtu.be    

Oracle Academy in Italy attended the recent CLUSIT Security Summit in Milan, which was a huge success with over 1,200 participants.  Oracle Academy was represented by Roberta Battagli, Oracle Academy...

Oracle Academy member institutions across India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Nepal joined our Oracle Academy Student Virtual Day—a unique online virtual conference with Oracle experts presenting key technology and IT career topics to help attendees build their technical and industry knowledge. Student registrations hit a record number with more than 11,000 attending to learn about Big Data, NoSQL database, IoT smart devices, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, blockchain, cryptocurrencies, digital experience, and database security. In addition to the technical offerings, students learned about career building blocks during sessions entitled “How to Get Your Career Started” and “How to Prepare for a Corporate Career.” This event was one in a series of Oracle Academy Student Virtual Days happening around the globe. Although Student Virtual Days are open to any Oracle Academy Individual members, many Institutional members choose to encourage their students to participate. These universities, polytechnics, colleges and schools often provide computer science (CS) education programs using Oracle Academy curriculum, including Java and database courses, as a part of their CS syllabus. In cases like this, Oracle Academy Student Virtual Day events create a unique and fun opportunity for students to engage with content that complements their formal coursework. Watch our events calendar for more Oracle Academy Student Virtual Days coming soon.

Oracle Academy member institutions across India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Nepal joined our Oracle Academy Student Virtual Day—a unique online virtual conference with...

Written by Chris Saxon. SQL. You’ve mastered the basics. You write where clauses in your sleep. You can throw together a join with ease. But you can’t help but feel there’s more to it. You’ve played with subqueries, but struggle to get to grips with them. You’ve seen colleagues perform SQL wizardry, transforming rows to columns. But you don’t know how. Null continues to confound you. SQL is the most widely used data access language there is. So whether you’re a developer, data scientist or DBA, you’ll encounter it often during your working life. Top-notch SQL skills is an asset that will pay dividends throughout your career. To help you do this, we’ve created Databases for Developers: Next Level, a free 10-week bootcamp. It will take your Oracle SQL skills to the next level and set you on the path to SQL mastery. This self-paced course starts each module with a video on a database topic. Then, so you can practice your newfound skills, there follows a LiveSQL interactive coding tutorial. And, to fix the material firmly in your memory, we finish with a set of quizzes designed to reinforce the key points. The first module starts on Monday, 14 May. You can register for free now! Missed the start? No problem! You can join Databases for Developers: Next Level at any time. The course is 100% online and available whenever you have time for more SQL. Dive right in!   Frequently Asked Questions What will I learn on this course? There are ten modules in the course. The first nine cover the topics below and the final reviews all the course material. -  Module 1: Null -  Module 2: Subqueries -  Module 3: Sorting and Top-N queries -  Module 4: Analytic Functions -  Module 5: Pivot and Unpivot -  Module 6: Union, Intersect & Minus -  Module 7: Hierarchical queries -  Module 8: Merge -  Module 9: Read consistency -  Module 10: Course Review. Includes a live Q&A. How much does this cost? Nothing. Nada. Nil. Zilch. That's right, it's 100% FREE! I missed the start. Can I still join? Yes! You can join Databases for Developers: Next Level at any time When does the course end? The modules have no fixed end date. Once you're registered you can take open classes whenever you want How much time will it take? We estimate that each module will take up to 30 minutes to complete What if I fall behind? This is a self-paced course. Once registered, you have lifetime access to these materials to review at any time. So you can complete it at your leisure. But to get the best value from this course we recommend that you complete each module in the week it opens. What is the format of this course? The course is a combination of videos, coding tutorials and quizzes. Each module starts with a video introducing the concepts. An interactive coding tutorial follows, allowing you to put these ideas into practice. Finally a series of quizzes reviews the material, ensuring you’ve mastered the principles. Do I need access to an Oracle Database? No! This is a fully online course. We’ve designed the materials so you can complete the course without a database. I don't have access to an Oracle Database. Where can I practice what I've learned? Head to LiveSQL. This is a free, browser based tool you can use to write SQL. Will I get a certificate for completing this course? Yes! If you complete all the exercises then we'll send you a certificate of your achievement. Which language is this course in? All the videos and quizzes are in English. The videos include English subtitles I don't know anything about SQL. Is this course right for me? This assumes a working knowledge of SQL. If you're starting from scratch, take Databases for Developers: Foundations first. I already have a good working knowledge of SQL and Oracle Database. Is this course right for me? We've designed this course to level up your SQL skills. If you're stuck at basic joins, this class is perfect. If you're an advanced user there may be little new for you. But it never hurts to brush up your skills, right? ;) I still have unanswered questions. Where can I ask them? You can reach out to Chris Saxon on Twitter. Ready to join? Head to the registration page and sign up!

Written by Chris Saxon. SQL. You’ve mastered the basics. You write where clauses in your sleep. You can throw together a join with ease. But you can’t help but feel there’s more to it. You’ve played with...

Oracle Academy and the Ministry of Education, Montenegro, signed a partnership agreement to incorporate Oracle Academy Java and database design curriculum into more than 90 schools over the next three years. In addition, Oracle Academy will help ramp up the skill sets of 300 teachers and support them with the needed resources for their 3,000 students across the country. As part of this collaboration, students will be encouraged to sit for an Oracle Certified Junior Associate exam for database or Java, which, if earned, will help set them apart from the competition when seeking careers. Students will receive hands-on experience with the latest technologies, helping to prepare them for success in future careers. "We are very proud of having a new partner, Oracle, one of the global leaders in software production, whose mission is to advance computer science education through Oracle Academy. In 2017, Oracle Academy supported 3.5 million students at nearly 12,000 institutions across 120 countries, and it is now time for Montenegro,” said Dr. Damir Sehovic, Minister of Education, Montenegro. “In the next three years, we will jointly advance computer science education in Montenegro and help students and teachers gain new knowledge that will help them in teaching, and to build a good base for further IT knowledge.”  

Oracle Academy and the Ministry of Education, Montenegro, signed a partnership agreement to incorporate Oracle Academy Java and database design curriculum into more than 90 schools over the next three...

This academic year is the year in which the the Croatia Ministry of Science and Education began curricular reform, through which computer science will become a compulsory subject in grades 5 and 6 in primary school - a major step forward for IT-related education in the country! Additionally, this is also the year in which technical vocational schools in Croatia began implementing their new curricula for computer technicians, developed earlier with support from the EU.  Oracle Academy has conducted four mixed (in-class and virtual) training sessions organized in cooperation with the Education and Teacher Training Agency, which is responsible for professional development of teachers in primary and secondary schools. An impressive number of 216 teachers registered for those training courses, of which 158 came from new institutional members and 58 came from schools that had registered in previous years. All courses were delivered in Croatian by the Oracle Academy instructor from the Polytechnics of Šibenik, Frane Urem. Urem also simultaneously delivered four training courses in English for attendees from Eastern European countries such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. On April 6, 2018, we celebrated Oracle Academy successes at our Oracle Academy Day at Algebra University College in Zagreb. Algebra is not only one of first Oracle Academy members in Croatia, but also is an Oracle University partner and traditionally hosts our events in Zagreb. The gathering of some 60 teachers provided not only an opportunity to present our past achievements, but also to announce and discuss our plans for the next school year and beyond, as well as to provide information to those teachers and schools that would like to register for future training courses. We were fortunate to have with us the President of the Croatian Association of Java Users (in Croatian, HUJAK), who delivered an interesting presentation about the past, present and future of Java, which is known for its broad usage as one of most popular programming languages today. We can't wait to see what the next academic year will bring for our engagement in Croatia, and thank everyone involved in making this happen, in particular our fantastic and busy Oracle Academy Program Manager, Darko Jurekovic.    

This academic year is the year in which the the Croatia Ministry of Science and Education began curricular reform, through which computer science will become a compulsory subject in grades 5 and 6 in...

On Friday, April 13, Oracle Czech hosted representatives of higher education institutions and secondary schools of the Czech Republic at the second ever Oracle Academy Day in Prague. The event confirmed that success happens where local Oracle teams gets involved in Oracle Academy activities and see this program as a valuable component to contribute to skills development in the country and encourage students into careers in computer science. The event was hosted by Vit Nohejl, Oracle Digital Sales Consultant, who has been a regular and enthusiastic volunteer Oracle Academy Ambassador in the Czech Republic since he started his journey at Oracle as an intern almost two years ago. The event attracted representatives of Oracle Academy institutional members from all around the Czech Republic. Our key speaker was Josef Svenda, Oracle Digital Technology Sales Director and Country Leader, who presented on Oracle, outlining future direction of both the industry and Oracle, as one of industry’s prominent leaders. Oracle Digital experts Jan Zeleny and Karel Firley as well as Senior Talent Advisor Monika Mikešova also actively participated and contributed to the event's success. Miroslav Lorenc from the High School of Economics in Prague delivered an interesting presentation of the results of a survey his team conducted among their graduate students, related to the skills and competencies they see critical for future careers.   We thank everyone involved in making this such a fantastic day !! In the 2018 / 2019 academic year the focus of Oracle Academy in Czech Republic will be to organize our first ever Oracle Academy training classes for teachers in the Czech Republic and bring greater visibility to the many great achievements our members in Czech Republic are having through engagement with us.

On Friday, April 13, Oracle Czech hosted representatives of higher education institutions and secondary schools of the Czech Republic at the second ever Oracle Academy Day in Prague. The event...

The Hungarian Oracle User Group Conference  is one of the most important annual events in the IT industry in Hungary, and attracts more than 400 participants, many of them from the academic sector. On April 9, 2018, the HOUG hosted this year an Oracle Academy Day, which was attended by many representatives from Hungarian higher education institutions that are members of the Oracle Academy program. The event was a great opportunity to meet our members in person and get them acquainted with the Oracle Academy program in greater detail, as among the presenters were not only Oracle Academy and Oracle University managers for Hungary, presenting both programs, but also representatives of the Oracle partner Webvalto, which is actively involved in Oracle Academy program delivery in Hungary. This event provided a platform to let our members know about a new Oracle Academy partnership agreement with the Governmental Agency for IT Projects, "KIFU", which was signed in October 2017. This new and innovative partnership includes commitment by Oracle Academy to organize free Oracle Academy training classes for a total of 450 faculty, all nominated by KIFU, from now until 2020. The next Oracle Academy training classes in Hungary are planned for July or August 2018 and will take place in Budapest. Classes will be delivered in the Hungarian language, as Oracle Academy has on-boarded instructors from Webvalto and Corvinus University in Hungary, who have been delivering Oracle Academy training courses since 2017.

The Hungarian Oracle User Group Conference  is one of the most important annual events in the IT industry in Hungary, and attracts more than 400 participants, many of them from the academic sector. On...

On Thursday, 18 April, 35 students from the Vienna International School (VIS) attended a Java workshop at the Oracle office in Vienna. The students, all grade 10, are part of a coding class at VIS that combines the Oracle Academy Java Foundations course with the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme Design subject. The students were warmly welcomed by the Oracle staff at their high-tech home on the 36th floor of Vienna’s modern DC Tower. Country Leader Martin Winkler welcomed the students and introduced the event, followed by Johannes Ferner of Oracle, who took the students down a fascinating exploration of “Big Data’ and its implications.  Oracle’s Max Jerg then laid out the fundamentals of Chatbot theory with the students. He had developed a coding challenge for the next part of the day, in which the students had the opportunity to program a Sphero robot using Java. First the students were put into competing groups, with each group having to explain different parts of the code. This activity really engaged the students.  Later, each group took its turn at adapting the code to control the Sphero robot itself. They were provided with a set of specifications for what the Sphero should do, and each group organized itself to devise the algorithms to achieve this. As a side activity the students competed individually in racing a Sphero Mini. At the end of the workshop, an awards ceremony was held to give prizes to the winning group of the main task, and also a prize for the winner of the individual Sphero Mini races. "This was an excellent educational experience for the students. It was clear from the outset that they were thoroughly engaged, and continued to be as the day unfolded. It was great to see them get exposure to some of the big ideas and hot topics in computer science today. This fantastic setting high above Vienna, and the fact that this was Oracle itself, really captured the student’s imagination. This will definitely give a boost to the profile of computer science at Vienna International School," said David Pitt, computer science & design teacher at the Vienna International School.

On Thursday, 18 April, 35 students from the Vienna International School (VIS) attended a Java workshop at the Oracle office in Vienna. The students, all grade 10, are part of a coding class at VIS...

Oracle Academy was the proud sponsor of the second edition of the Java Competition – Code with Greenfoot event, organized by the ADFABER Organisation, which announced its winners on 26 March, 2018. The competition took place during November 2017 through March 2018 to encourage and help young students from high schools extend their competences in Java object-oriented programming using the Greenfoot platform, and the results were spectacular. Students all across Romania learned the most used programming language in the world, Java, and were able to test and validate their knowledge. Most importantly, the competition recognised them for their effort. More than 236 teams formed by two students and one teacher/ mentor created amazing games and educative stories practicing object-oriented programming at its highest level. The winner of the contest was the Square project, a labyrinth of logical thinking (consisting of Motoi Alexandru and Iancu George, and coordinating teacher Voica Nicoleta), from the Ion C Bratianu National College in Pitesti. Second place was won by the Dual Match project, a memory game that tests the player's concentration capabilities (consisting of Stratulat Dragoş and Lungu Dragoş, and coordinating teacher Stratulat Daniela) from the "Costache Negri" National College in Galaţi. Third place was awarded to the Crystal Tale project from the Anastasescu National College in Roşiorii de Vede. In Crystal Tale, a drag and drop game, users use arrows and drag and drop functionality to get crystals. Congratulations to the winners of these great, engaging projects and to all the students who challenged themselves by participating in this competition!      

Oracle Academy was the proud sponsor of the second edition of the Java Competition – Code with Greenfoot event, organized by the ADFABER Organisation, which announced its winners on 26 March, 2018. The...

Oracle Academy member Qassim University, College of Computer and Information Science, provides an interactive learning environment in which faculty members and students participate together. The College, in cooperation with the Computer Club and the Knowledge Team, have launched a program called the Oracle Academy Coffee Hour to create a modern, interactive learning environment for faculty members and students to collaborate and debate that aims to improve the educational process. Students are the focus of the program, with time and space provided to them to participate and interact with scientific learning materials in a relaxed environment with a cup of coffee. The activity begins with the Oracle Academy program and how to benefit from it, and then invites higher level students, from a database class, to tutor students from the first level who also are studying this specialization. For the students, this is a great way to improve their communication and engagement skills as they serve in the roles of both teachers and learners. We hope participants in this novel idea enjoy both the learning opportunity and the coffee!

Oracle Academy member Qassim University, College of Computer and Information Science, provides an interactive learning environment in which faculty members and students participate together. The...

We were delighted to host our annual Oracle Academy day in Italy on March 29 at the new Oracle office in Via Amsterdam, Rome. The day was hosted by Roberta Battagli, Oracle Academy country manager, who emphasized the importance of digital skills whilst sharing Oracle Academy success stories from across the region. The audience included academics from Italy’s top Universities such as Sapienza Università Di Roma La Federico II Napooli, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata". Maria Teresa Sica, from Oracle HR, opened the event with a presentation on “The New Professions” to the audience of academics. This theme was followed up by Gabriele Provinciali, Solution Architect, who debated the merits of the “mobile” generation and classic versus cloud services. The role of women in IT was discussed by Maria Pia Costanzo, Business Solution Senior Manager, whilst Roberta Valenzi spoke of Oracle University, certification and the WDP program. The contribution of Alan Turing to computer science and its relevance today was presented by Claudio Paolucci, Principal Sales Consultant with Cloud Infrastructure.  Special thanks to the whole Oracle Italy team who helped make the event a success.          

We were delighted to host our annual Oracle Academy day in Italy on March 29 at the new Oracle office in Via Amsterdam, Rome. The day was hosted by Roberta Battagli, Oracle Academy country...

Oracle Academy in Italy has conducted a session for students called "The School of Big Data" covering topics such as the Internet of Things, Machine Learning, Cloud, Security and Web Marketing.  "The program we have developed offers a mix of lectures, workshops and "homework," explains Gabriela Bizzozero, HR Director, Oracle Italy (pictured), "that goes well beyond the acquisition of knowledge or technicality. It is important that young people first become aware of what the world of work means, and know about the new technologies at the center of digital transformation and start to put into practice what they have learned with the creation of a business plan. In this way, they acquire other skills, such as working in groups and respecting plans and commitments, which make the difference in the way they will present themselves in the world of work." The program, run by Oracle in Italy, invites every year 100 students from different schools to participate in a series of events which introduces the technologies and trends that are driving digital transformation and advises students how to understand working with industry, and considering digital entrepreneurship. For example, the students worked in groups to develop an innovative start-up idea, which exploited opportunities offered by technology.  Oracle Academy is part of the program which makes its technologies available to the schools and universities, in particular Java and database curriculum that prepares the students for Oracle professional certification paths.  Companies such as Oracle take part in these events thanks to the “Scuola-Lavoro” project that allows individual companies to provide effective stimuli useful to students, both for direct knowledge of the entrepreneurial world and for the state exams. Read more at https://www.digital4.biz/hr/hr-transformation/asse-scuola-impresa-partire-dalle-buone-pratiche-per-giocare-la-partita-dellinnovazione/ http://www.h24notizie.com/2018/03/aziende-al-marconi-incontro-tra-imprese-e-scuola/      

Oracle Academy in Italy has conducted a session for students called "The School of Big Data" covering topics such as the Internet of Things, Machine Learning, Cloud, Security and Web Marketing.  "The...

Hones Coding and Creative Skills for Students and Teachers in Local Schools Oracle Academy, Oracle’s flagship philanthropic educational program, recently hosted a “Code Together with Oracle Academy” event in Sri Lanka. The initiative supports the country’s advancement of computer science education and inspires students’ creativity. Around 120 students between the ages of 12-14 years old across 10 schools in the Western Province attended the event aimed at sharpening their knowledge about coding concepts and gain insight into latest tools and emerging technologies. “At Oracle Academy, we are thrilled to support ongoing work in Sri Lanka to inspire and engage students in computer science. This initiative provides an excellent opportunity for students to display their coding skills and it was heartening to see how they understood object-oriented programming concepts with a little bit of advice and guidance from us,” said Damian Haas, regional director, Oracle Academy, Asia Pacific and Japan.   An Oracle Academy trainer conducted several informative sessions, as well as interactively taught students how to use graphic design software called Alice, a 3D educational software tool with a drag-and-drop interface for creating animations. A majority of these students neither had experience with computer programming nor 3D animations. However, students were able to develop amazing animations using their imagination, creativity and computing. “Skills and knowledge are the driving forces of economic growth and social development for any country. I am so glad to see the level of interest shown by these young minds,” said former Sri Lanka Cricket Captain Mahela Jayawardena. “Events like these help generate Sri Lankan students’ interest in the field of Computer Science, provide them an opportunity to code in a collaborative environment, and equip them with the IT skills they need to compete in tomorrow’s job market.” In addition to learning how to code, students had the chance to hear from a number of speakers at the event—Oracle partners, Oracle Academy members and guest speakers—who exchanged their experiences with participants on pursuing a career in the technology field and becoming a future leader of Sri Lanka. The students enjoyed the opportunity to create animations in a hands-on environment, completing a series of tasks on their own. “I am thrilled to see the level of enthusiasm and level of interaction displayed by these young minds at “Code Together with Oracle Academy,” said Chandita Samaranayake, head of applications, Sri Lanka, Indochina and Maldives, Oracle. These students are our future assets. Our aim is to provide the necessary exposure and interaction with computer science, while creating an awareness of the latest technologies, innovations and opportunities available.” Attendees at the event included Chitranganie Mubarak, chairwoman, Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka; Damian Haas, regional director, Oracle Academy, Asia Pacific and Japan; Mahela Jayawardena, former Sri Lanka Cricket Captain; and Chandita Samaranayake, head of applications, Sri Lanka, Indochina and Maldives, Oracle. Bring computer science to your community >

Hones Coding and Creative Skills for Students and Teachers in Local Schools Oracle Academy, Oracle’s flagship philanthropic educational program, recently hosted a “Code Together with Oracle...

  Oracle Academy provided sponsorships for college students to attend the Analytics and Data Summit at Oracle’s World Wide headquarters, March 20-22, 2018. College students from all over the US joined with working professionals to learn more about Oracle’s analytics, big data, cloud, machine learning, internet of things, spatial, and graph technologies. The summit kicked off with an opening keynote by Andrew Mendelsohn Executive Vice President, Oracle Database Server Technologies.  He spoke about the new Oracle Autonomous Database, the first self-driving database that will revolutionize data management. The database automatically upgrades, patches and tunes itself while running, and automates security updates with no downtime window required.  The database also consumes less compute and storage because of machine learning and automatic compression. This makes it easier for database experts to do their job and frees them up to do additional work they that would not be able to get to before due to completing mundane, but necessary tasks. Keynotes from Oracle executives were not the only thing that attracted attendees to the Analytics and Data Summit.  Students, customers and partners also attended sessions, hands-on labs, and networking events with an “analytics and data” focus.  Students from as far away as Georgia Tech and George Mason University were in attendance to experience hands-on-labs taught by word-class experts and to speak with Oracle partners and customers. The Oracle R Enterprise hands-on lab was a favorite of students as they gained valuable experience learning how to use Oracle Database as a high performance compute engine to scale R for enterprise-size data volumes. The hands-on lab included vignettes on machine-learning-based variable selection and clustering, while also seeing how to productionize R scripts using SQL.  Sanika Lahane and Karuna Kumari from Saint Mary’s college in Moraga California summed up the student experience at the Analytics and Data summit by saying, “We came to learn more about analytics because that’s what we want to do with our careers.”  If you are interested in learning more about the summit, check out the Analytics and Data Summit page, and if you are a college student and would like to learn how to attend next year’s conference contact tyra.crockett@oracle.com  Content provided by Tyra Crockett

  Oracle Academy provided sponsorships for college students to attend the Analytics and Data Summit at Oracle’s World Wide headquarters, March 20-22, 2018. College students from all over the US joined...

Oracle Academy in Saudi Arabia were one of the proud sponsors of the 4th programming Jam a virtual programming competition that is organized by the ACM Chapter in Saudi Arabia and hosted by the Prince Sultan university. The competition was open to all Saudi university students providing a national forum for individuals to compete, contribute and excel at problem solving using the Java programming language. The mission and objectives of this competition go hand in hand with Kingdoms’ Vision 2030 enlightening Saudi Youth and preparing them for the Industry.  This years’ Programming Jam 4.0 has been a resounding success, with 153 teams from 19 universities from across the Kingdom participating with the majority of teams (75%) being female teams, a great result in itself showing that female students are developing their Java skills and are proud to showcase them to the world !   http://www.programming-jam  The Programming Jam 4.0 set the teams 18 programming problems to be solved in Java in only 14 hours!  The happy top 3 winning teams were: 1S2B-AGAIN team from Prince Sultan University 2MINIGMA team from King Saudi University 3FCITKAU  team from King AbdulAziz University The ACM Chapter in Saudi Arabia would like to thank Dr. Ahmed Yamani, Rector of Prince Sultan University,Dr. Saad AlRwaita, Vice-Rector for Administration and Financial Affairs,Dr. AbdulHafeez Feda, Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs and Research, and Dr. Rimah Alyahya for their valuable support to the ACM Chapter activities in Saudi Arabia. We also thank Dr. Mohamed AlKanhal, the Dean of College of Computer and Information Sciences for his management of the ACM Chapter activities and also the organizing teams members: Chair Dr. Anis Koubaa   Vice Chair Dr. Basit Qureshi   Organizing Committee      Dr. Soaud Larabi   Organizing Committee      Mr. Yasir Javed   Organizing Committee      Ms. Roohi Jan   Organizing Committee      Ms. Ishrat Khan    

Oracle Academy in Saudi Arabia were one of the proud sponsors of the 4th programming Jam a virtual programming competition that is organized by the ACM Chapter in Saudi Arabia and hosted by the Prince...

Oracle Academy were pleased to invite students from our member universities to take part in the Oracle User Group (OUG) Ireland conference. We welcomed students to an Oracle Academy Stream and where fortunate enough to have Brendan Tierney (OUG Ace Director) speak to our students with a very informative and entertaining talk on SQL. Students also learned more about Oracle Academy including a presentation on the ‘job market and how to get that job’. The students then attended their choice of streams over four areas, which included Analytics & Big Data, Database, Development, and Applications & Cloud Apps. The streams were run by OUG members and included: Oracle Loves Kafka Goodbye Old Friend – Transitioning from a forms system to an Apex Application Rise of Chatbots: AI Driven Conversational Interfaces for Business Implementing Incremental Forever Strategy for Oracle Database Backup Throughout the day, our student guests had the chance to interact with more than 250 attendees who are professional experts from companies who use Oracle Products and services.The students where both inspired and educated as to how technology business works in real life, with many taking the opportunity to meet what may be future employers. It was a super day of learning, stimulation, creativity and networking that our student guests where very enthusiastic about.      

Oracle Academy were pleased to invite students from our member universities to take part in the Oracle User Group (OUG) Ireland conference. We welcomed students to an Oracle Academy Stream and where...

Oracle Academy Program Manager, Italy, Roberta Battagli, recently participated in the first Italian nation-wide event dedicated to schools and students : TEXYouth@Bologna2018 which took place on the 17th February, 2018.  This great new event was organized with the Italian Ministry for Education (MIUR) and the Foundazione Golinelli, who support education, training and culture to foster the intellectual and ethical growth of young people and society, with the objective to contribute to the sustainable development of the country. https://issuu.com/tedxbologna/docs/tedxyouthbo2018_rassegna_stampa.ppt We were especially interested in what the students had to say ! and got the opportunity to hear from 11 speakers, all students from secondary schools in Italy, who were selected to speak through a contest which included the participation of over 500 youths. Oracle Academy and TEDxYouth@Bologna shared the goal to contribute to the diffusion of ideas, creativity, change and innovation with great enthusiasm from students, youths and schools. See for yourself at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3bYTGslwAE

Oracle Academy Program Manager, Italy, Roberta Battagli, recently participated in the first Italian nation-wide event dedicated to schools and students : TEXYouth@Bologna2018 which took place on the...

  In partnership with Oracle’s Startup Accelerator, Oracle Academy is producing a video interview series featuring notable entrepreneurs in the Oracle community. In their videos, each entrepreneur will share their story as founders and offer advice to encourage and inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs. During the week of March 19th, the two teams met at Oracle’s brand-new campus in Austin, Texas to record the first six interviews of the series. The timing was perfect since the campus’ Grand Opening celebration was the same week! I visited the campus the day before we started filming so I could walk the camera crew’s path with security and make sure everything was in place for the interviews. Since the Town Hall and Grand Opening were also scheduled for the following day, the campus was buzzing with both event and construction crews as they scurried to get everything camera-ready. They were still installing hand rails on the main staircase! It was an impressive scene to watch. On the first day of filming, we sat down with Nik Adhia (Oracle, Sr. Director Startup Cloud Accelerator), Karlie Krieger (Startup Grind, VP Marketing), Bob Quillin (Oracle, VP Developer Relations) and Michael Marchand (Dell, Chief Customer Officer). It was a long day of filming but we got to celebrate afterwards by enjoying the food trucks and music festivities at the Grand Opening. On the second day of filming, we met at the Capital Factory, a startup incubator and co-working space in downtown Austin. We sat down with Capital Factory’s CEO, Josh Baer followed by his co-founder, Bob Decker. Each entrepreneur had a unique story to tell but much of their advice followed in the same vein. They all seemed to agree that being a good storyteller was imperative to their success – which is exactly what they were great at in their interviews! It was a lot of fun to be behind-the-scenes and to witness all the work that goes into capturing just a few minutes of footage. I can’t wait to see the finished product and I am sure our future entrepreneurs will appreciate it as much as I do! Content by: Danielle Ferretti

  In partnership with Oracle’s Startup Accelerator, Oracle Academy is producing a video interview series featuring notable entrepreneurs in the Oracle community. In their videos, each entrepreneur will...

Oracle Academy member BBS Haarentor der Stadt Oldenburg recently organized an trip to Berlin for their students the packed agenda included a city tour, a visit to the BMW motorcycle plant, an ice hockey game and of course a visit to @Oracle Berlin ! Oracle Professionals Nadine Schöne (Snr Sales Consultant) and Karin Patenge (Business Development Manager) welcomed the student group at the Oracle customer visitor center and were happy to spend the afternoon with the 24 students (aged 18-22)  and their teachers. The presentations focused on Big Data and IoT topics and a big highlight of the day was the opportunity for the students to engage in an “IoT Racing Demo in action”. The students also contributed to a lively discussion on hot topics such as NoSQL, MOOCs, ChatBots and the importance of the  English language in the IT world. The students thoroughly enjoyed their visits to Berlin and as a thank you created this short video We hope to see them back again at Oracle again next year!    

Oracle Academy member BBS Haarentor der Stadt Oldenburg recently organized an trip to Berlin for their students the packed agenda included a city tour, a visit to the BMW motorcycle plant, an...

Oracle Academy were delighted to participate in the Oracle Cloud Day, in Turkey on the 8th February, 2018. We set up an Oracle Academy booth which gave us a great opportunity to showcase our program to the 800 attendees. We were also very excited to present to the audience the fantastic work being done by students of Bilkent University. These students delivered a Oracle Academy's Getting Started with Java Using Alice workshop to 40 female students in a project for the ACM-W Student Chapter’s - this Coding Sisters project won the Internet Society’s Chapterthon 2017 competition. You can see them in action here This fantastic event brought together Oracle Customers, Experts and Partners interested to learn about Oracle products and the latest technology trends, with plenty of time and space to also network with their industry peers! Our participation gave us the chance to showcase to a wide audience Oracle Academy resources from curriculum in Java & Database to training opportunities for educators and our new IoT Quick Labs.     

Oracle Academy were delighted to participate in the Oracle Cloud Day, in Turkey on the 8th February, 2018. We set up an Oracle Academy booth which gave us a great opportunity to showcase our program...

Our Russian Oracle Academy program manager, Julia Sokolova, ran “Future of Education” Seminars on on the 20th February, 2018 at in Pyatigorsk and Vladikavkaz in Russia. The first presentations to academics explored trends for the future of technology and education, examined emerging developments in technology and how Oracle Academy can work with our members to understand the implications of these trends teaching and learning in the classroom. The second part of this event was devoted to how our members could use Oracle Academy materials in schools, colleges and universities, taking into account the curriculum specifics and needs of the Russian educational system. The use of “Alice Workshop in a Box” and Getting Started with Java using Alice study resources were also discussed as a starting point for young students to start their learning journey in Java. We are looking forward to starting further engagements with these academics.                                                            

Our Russian Oracle Academy program manager, Julia Sokolova, ran “Future of Education” Seminars on on the 20th February, 2018 at in Pyatigorsk and Vladikavkaz in Russia. The first presentations to...

On January 31, 2018 I was delighted to attend in person the Oracle Academy Day in Romania and meet with the  the Ministry of Education in Romania who attended to hear about the great engagement we have with academics and teachers across many different parts of Romania. Our Oracle Academy partner Adfaber presented the very popular competitions they are running in collaboration with us which give Romanian students the opportunity to showcase their skills.  Adfaber have both a University Java Programming competition in progress and recently school students participated in their Alice and Greenfoot competition. To represent industry we were pleased to have the Mirela Ardelean, the Founder and Vice-President of the Romanian Oracle User Group invite our members to engage with them to allow students to hear from hands on professionals on what it is like to the work in the IT sector with Oracle. During this event, Oracle Academy program details were presented to 60 academic and partners and most importantly heard from Oracle employees from different lines of business who have been giving their time and expertise to students by running regular workshops with them throughout the academic year. https://academy.oracle.com/en/newsletters/october_2017-full.html#experts Two teachers Professor Mirela Danubianu, Universitatea Stefan cel Mare, Suceava and Rodica Smintina, Professor C.N. “Ghe. Sincai” Bucuresti presented two case studies from a high school and university perspective to show them how they have benefited from using Oracle Academy resources with their students.    

On January 31, 2018 I was delighted to attend in person the Oracle Academy Day in Romania and meet with the  the Ministry of Education in Romania who attended to hear about the great engagement we...

On Tuesday February 27, 2018 Oracle Academy were pleased to sign a three year partnership agreement with Lagos State Government to support the CodeLagos initiative of the Ministry of Education. CodeLagos is an initiative which aims to position Lagos State as the technology frontier in Africa by training 1 million Lagos residents to code. Already, almost 20,000 students have been trained with the CodeLagos “Coding Education Framework” in over 200 centres across the State including Out-of-School centres in Public libraries and community centres. Oracle Academy’s Java Fundamentals Curriculum has been adopted into the Code Lagos’ Coding Education Framework to teach Lagosians Java programming. This partnership also allowed the sponsorship of 2 Code centers; Ikeja, Junior High School & Oshodi Senior High School, and for Oracle Academy to train up to 300  for Code Lagos Master Teachers over a period of 3 years. Our first master teachers were on hand to celebrate this exciting new partnership ! During the announcement, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Education, Mr. Obafela bank-Olemoh announced the collaboration with Oracle Academy and expressed appreciation for the partnership with the State to provide access to Computer Science Education for Lagosians through the CodeLagos initiative. http://codelagos.org/codelagos-teams-with-industry-leader-oracle/

On Tuesday February 27, 2018 Oracle Academy were pleased to sign a three year partnership agreement with Lagos State Government to support the CodeLagos initiative of the Ministry of Education. CodeLag...

For the first time Oracle Academy has attended an event in Lebanon - Edex 2018 organized by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education to help students explore a wide range of academic and career opportunities and discover the right future for them. This dedicated annual exhibition brings students, parents, teachers, schools and universities together across one platform to showcase the latest career trends and related education paths. Over,  50 top local and international universities attended this unique event. http://www.promofair.com.lb/exhibitions/Edex Students were able to meet and hear from international and local professionals who introduced them to the different fields of study available in the Technology sector. The Oracle Academy team in MEA also had the opportunity to meet a wide range of academics and students to talk to them about the Oracle Academy's our free expertly developed learning resources, comprehensive computer science academic curriculum and training opportunities. Students including many studying at the "Institute Moderne du Liban" were keen to understand the need of a good computer science education to make them college and career ready in today’s global economy.  

For the first time Oracle Academy has attended an event in Lebanon - Edex 2018 organized by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education to help students explore a wide range of academic and career...

On Feb 22nd 2018, Oracle Academy in Greece organized the 4th Oracle Academy Day for Students, in cooperation with the international, nonprofit, volunteer student organization AIESEC at the University of Crete. Over 200 students from local universities attended the event to hear about the Oracle Academy program details and benefits of becoming an how a student can join the program as an individual member to keep up with trends and development in the ICT sector.. We were also delighted to welcome Oracle Hellas executives who shared today’s IT trends, Oracle’s investment in Greece with the Cloud Development Hub and the Enterprise Security Consulting Competence Centre.  In addition, students heard about the job opportunities presented to young IT professionals to join Oracle’s teams, the benefits of joining AIESEC and working abroad in companies. The Head of the Computer Science department of the University of Crete also presented to faculty during the event and endorsed The Oracle Academy and its positive cooperation with the University of Crete.    

On Feb 22nd 2018, Oracle Academy in Greece organized the 4th Oracle Academy Day for Students, in cooperation with the international, nonprofit, volunteer student organization AIESEC at the University...

In Sofia, Bulgaria  on February 21, 2018, the Oracle Academy collaborated with “Junior Achievement Bulgaria” to host an Oracle Academy Day. The Event was held in their creative shared space in the Sofia Tech Park.  Many existing Oracle Academy members were invited to hear about new benefits in the Oracle Academy program and to share their positive experiences with fellow educators. The innovative and business oriented agenda of the event focused on the Oracle Academy program details, an overview of Cloud computing and local best practices were shared from the “Agile School” in Sofia and the University of Library studies and IT. There were many special Oracle guests attending the event such as Orlaith Lawton, Senior Marketing Manager, Oracle Academy, EMEA and George Alexandrov, Country Leader of Oracle in Bulgaria.  Attendees also heard from Milena Gerova. the President of the Oracle User Group in Bulgaria and the State Agency for e-Governance who informed educators about their public campaign for cyber security “I won’t be hacked”.

In Sofia, Bulgaria  on February 21, 2018, the Oracle Academy collaborated with “Junior Achievement Bulgaria” to host an Oracle Academy Day. The Event was held in their creative shared space in the...

Oracle Academy's first training engagements in Bosnia and Herzegovina have started ! In January and February 2018, The Oracle Academy organized classes in Java Fundamentals and  Java Foundations kindly hosted by the Electrical Technical school in Tuzla and delivered by Emir Mešković an accredited Oracle Academy Instructor from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Tuzla. Oracle Academy currently has 31 institutions alone in Tuzla  and we are delighted to have started what we hope is a long term engagement with all of our 47 Oracle Academy Institutional members in Bosnia and Herzegovina.                                                                                                                                                               

Oracle Academy's first training engagements in Bosnia and Herzegovina have started ! In January and February 2018, The Oracle Academy organized classes in Java Fundamentals and  Java Foundations...

In January and February 2018, the first ever training classes delivered by Oracle Academy in Hungary, were held in Budapest during the Winter Academic Break.  The classes introduced the Oracle Academy Database Foundations and Java Programming courses to educators at the event hosted by the Corvinus University in Budapest.  This training is a result of a three-year-long Partner Agreement with Oracle Academy and the Hungarian Government IT Development Agency (KIFÜ). Through this Agreement, all higher education institutions that provide STEM studies in Hungary became Oracle Academy members and Oracle Academy committed to organize 18 training events for up to 450 teachers from those institutions during the life cycle of the agreement. The agreement also meets Hungary's strategy of increasing the number of its STEM graduates in order to fill the gap between the demand of the growing labor market and the output of its Higher Education institutions.. We wish all the educators who attended the training the best of luck in taking this learning into their classrooms to the students.  

In January and February 2018, the first ever training classes delivered by Oracle Academy in Hungary, were held in Budapest during the Winter Academic Break.  The classes introduced the Oracle Academy...

  On the 20th of Feb., The Oracle Academy sponsored “Masters of Digital 2018” and Danny Gooris,  the Oracle Academy, Senior Manager for EMEA, participated in a panel discussion on How to Foster Digital Growth and Scale up in Europe, to address the skills needs. “Masters of Digital 2018” is the annual flagship event of DIGITAL EUROPE, the leading trade association which has represented  the digital technology industry across Europe since 1999.  It is a yearly unique opportunity for governments and businesses to discuss the forthcoming policy challenges impacting the Digital Economy and to identify the key enablers that will transform Europe digitally and acknowledge the positive impact that SMEs have on the European Economy. Today, SMEs employ 93 million people and 99.8% of businesses operating in Europe are SMEs, these organizations are currently facing a huge issue of a lack of skills. Oracle Academy is contributing to close this skills set gap by helping students to prepare for life and work in our modern technology-driven global economy. Oracle Academy focuses on these skills, by working with academic institutions by advancing computer science education to drive knowledge, innovation, skills development, and diversity in technology fields. https://www.mastersofdigital.org/                                                  

  On the 20th of Feb., The Oracle Academy sponsored “Masters of Digital 2018” and Danny Gooris,  the Oracle Academy, Senior Manager for EMEA, participated in a panel discussion on How to Foster Digital...

  One of the many advantages of being the North America Oracle Academy Regional Director, is the opportunity to spend time talking with education leaders at the State, K12 District, school site, and post-secondary level from all over the nation. I spend time learning, sharing ideas, celebrating successes, and understanding challenges that these leaders face each day. These conversations and experiences are often the most exciting yet humbling part of my job. February is celebrated as CTE Month and this year, I found myself reflecting on the impact that Career Technical Education has on our students both now and in the future. A few thoughts to share are: Reflection #1: CTE continues to evolve to meet changing needs. State and District leadership continue to strive to build sustainable and real-world CTE Pathways that lead our students to college and career success.  It’s the CTE leadership that can both anticipate and leverage, through research and relationships, the corporate workforce need and then translate that need into CTE pathways for students to pursue. Many of these pathways include applicable industry certifications, apprenticeship/internships, and defined articulation programs with feeder post-secondary institutions. At Oracle Academy, we work to ensure our resources continue to support the needs of CTE leadership through curriculum and certification opportunities that reflect industry needs. Reflection #2: Collaboration between local industry and education leadership continue to drive CTE student success. This isn’t a new concept but what I’ve noticed is an uptick in our education and industry leadership working together to create applicable internships, apprenticeships, and mentorships to support the interest of our students. I’ve heard over and over again the importance that these roles play in supporting and creating sustainable CTE programs.  At Oracle Academy, our role revolves around building the best classroom resources for the student and teacher so that their content knowledge and often times, confidence, is foundationally strong so that attainment of first time internships and/or apprenticeships are successful. Reflection #3: A focused effort and persistence will prevail!  As we all know, the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act is critical to ensuring that quality and sustainable CTE programs meet the changing needs of learners and employers. This act works to improve the academic and technical achievement of CTE students, helps to strengthen the bridge between secondary and post-secondary, and balances the student need with that of a new economy.  As parents, educators, and leaders, it’s our duty to encourage organizations, like CareerTech, that advocate on behalf of CTE programs as well as the teachers and students dedicated to CTE success. Oracle Academy supports this mission by continuing to provide our world-class student-facing curriculum and educator professional development - aligned to the IT Career Cluster Pathway - for FREE. For those of you not familiar, Oracle Academy is Oracle's flagship program in education philanthropy, currently supporting more than 3.5 million students annually in 120 countries. We advance computing technology education to increase knowledge, skills development, innovation and diversity in computing fields by providing: free academic curriculum (database and Java), free teacher professional development, free software licenses for teaching and academic, not-for-profit research Two years ago, we introduced Oracle Certified Junior Associate certifications in database and Java; these certification exams align to our Java Foundations and Database Foundations courses and are specifically designed with students in mind to help support internship, summer job, and first job applications. Oracle Academy exists to improve the computing technology skills of young people, globally! If we strengthen the computing technology pathway between secondary, post-secondary, and career, we are essentially strengthening the future for our children! Career Technical Education holds a very special place in my heart and I hope this blog reflects both the love and respect that I have for CTE programs and its significant impact on student achievement!

  One of the many advantages of being the North America Oracle Academy Regional Director, is the opportunity to spend time talking with education leaders at the State, K12 District, school site,...

  It is no secret that the computer science field has a shortage of women.  It is an industry that is currently male dominated.  At Oracle Academy, we are supportive of all students learning coding skills, but want to help emphasize that it is, most certainly, an option for girls. On Saturday, February 3rd, 2018, McKinney High School (TX) hosted #DigitalDivas2018, an all-girls high school computer programming competition. The competition was made up of three divisions: a Beginner Division for girls with little-to-no programming experience, a Novice Division for girls with general experience in computer science, and an Advanced Division for girls with greater programming experience. Additionally, the organizers of the event created a non-competitive division for students who wished to attend workshop sessions to learn about coding. The goal of Digital Divas is “Seeking to continue the tradition of introducing girls to Computer Science and promoting the presence of women in the STEM workforce”. Quote from one of last year’s contestants: “My name is Han Nguyen, and I participated in the 2017 Digital Divas competition earlier this year. To say the experience was amazing would be an understatement. Competing in one of the tournament divisions, I earned myself second place along with my two teammates. As I had never competed before, this really shined light on what I was truly capable of, without even taking into account the knowledge I gained on that day. I was honored to find that this school year, in 2018, McKinney High School is hosting the event. I want other girls to be able to feel the same positive impact towards computer science that I felt, and I am excited to showcase the true power of girls in the technological fields.” Digital Divas is currently in its fifth year, and is continuing to grow. This year, there were 300 high school girls involved from the Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and Austin areas.  Huge shout out to all of the educators who are dedicated to computer science education and make the sacrifices necessary to make this event successful! Search for #DigitalDivas2018 on twitter for more pictures. Oracle Academy is proud to support #DigitalDivas2018! Content provided by Cassi Elliott

  It is no secret that the computer science field has a shortage of women.  It is an industry that is currently male dominated.  At Oracle Academy, we are supportive of all students learning coding...

  Oracle Academy wants to help you work smarter not harder this summer.  We have designed an efficient summer training schedule to meet all of your Computer Science professional development needs.  We have condensed our training schedule so you spend less of your summer in “virtual-class” but rather potentially finish an entire professional development session in as little as two weeks!  See the schedule below and register before the classes are full. As always, if you have questions reach out to the Oracle Academy team, we are here to help!  If you don’t know how to access these free training classes, start by registering for an Oracle Academy Institutional membership. P.S. Need additional information?  Try these helpful links: Technology requirements iLearning tutorial videos Sign up for training classes on our events calendar Certification information Help with common problems Who else is a member of Oracle Academy? Summer Open Class Training Schedule Database Foundations June 11th - June 22nd Monday - Friday 10:00-12:00am CST (8-10 PST, 9-11 MST, 11-1 EST) Database Foundations July 9th –July 20th Monday - Friday 2:00-4:00pm CST (12-2 PST, 1-3 MST, 3-5 EST) Database Design and Programming with SQL July 9th –July 20th Monday – Friday 9:00-12:00 CST (7-10 PST, 8-11 MST, 10-1 EST) Java Fundamentals June 11th - June 25th  Monday - Friday 1:00-4:00pm CST (11-2 PST, 12-3 MST, 2-5 EST) Java Fundamentals July 9th –July 23rd  Monday - Friday 9:00-12:00 CST (7-10 PST, 8-11 MST, 10-1 EST) Java Programming July 24th- July 27th Tuesday - Friday 9:00-12:00 CST (7-10 PST, 8-11 MST, 10-1 EST)

  Oracle Academy wants to help you work smarter not harder this summer.  We have designed an efficient summer training schedule to meet all of your Computer Science professional development needs.  We...

The Oracle Academy certifications are now mapped with the national ICT qualification framework in Dutch secondary vocational education. Mapping has taken place through the comparative analysis by Netherlands Academy Support Centre (NASC) between Oracle Academy courses & certifications and ICT diploma qualifications. Educators can implement the Oracle Academy certifications into their curriculum and understand which Oracle University professional certifications are relevant to ICT education on an MBO (vocational) level. https://www.government.nl/topics/secondary-vocational-education-mbo-and-higher-education/higher-education Hans Blankendaal from NASC described the certification mapping project with Oracle Academy as follows: “It’s very important to keep the comparisons between the dutch qualification framework and professional certifications up to date. Besides this, it’s relevant to get a complete image of all the professional certification possibilities. That’s why we are happy that we can add the professional certifications of Oracle to that overview. Now it’s clear to teachers, who would like to use the Oracle Academy material for their students to get educated, how these certifications and the Oracle Academy curriculum cover the national standards. With a great thanks to the experts from education and business that made this possible.”  

The Oracle Academy certifications are now mapped with the national ICT qualification framework in Dutch secondary vocational education. Mapping has taken place through the comparative analysis by...

On February 22nd, Oracle Academy arrived in Baltimore, MD for the #SIGCSE2018 conference.  We had the opportunity to speak to amazing Computer Science teachers, both higher education faculty and K12 teachers, from all across the world!  We welcome time to learn about your successes and gathering your feedback as we continually use this feedback to create new projects and make updates to our current resources.  We work hard to provide the best resources in the ever changing climate of teaching Computer Science.  While at the conference, Oracle Academy also had the opportunity to lead a panel on The Importance of Diversity to the Overall Health of the Technology Industry.  The panel discussion focused on how diversity elevates innovation as individuals from different backgrounds bring varied perspectives to their collaborative work teams.  To create a diverse workforce, we need to encourage more girls and underrepresented minority (URM) students to participate in computer science classes starting in primary and secondary school and continuing through higher education. Oracle Academy Panelists included: Moderator: Lorilyn Owens Director Members Services Oracle Academy Dr. Helen Hu, Computer Science Professor Westminster College Dr. Carol Fletcher, Deputy Director Stem Center for Education, University of Texas at Austin Thamina Christensen, Group Product Manager, Oracle Corporation Maya Garcia, Director STEM, DC Office of State Superintendent of Education Melissa Risteff, CEO Couragion Each panelist brought a different perspective to the discussion.  Melissa Risteff, CEO of Couragion, shared her thoughts as to why computer science should be considered a literacy that all students should learn. Until the education community treats CS education as a requirement like math and reading, Melissa believes we will have a hard time achieving our diversity goals.   Drs. Carol Fletcher and Helen Hu provided data on how undeserved minority students are taking computer science classes at a rising rate in Texas and Utah but pointed out that female enrollment still lags behind the trend. Carol pointed out that if we want to invest in diversity at scale, we need to invest in professional development for teachers. Helen Hu commented that while we are making great strides in K-12 CS education, universities still favor students with previous programming skills and that if we want to increase diversity in industry, we need to make policy changes at a university level as well. Maya Garcia seconded these comments, as she told of her experiences as a minority female student at Mount Holyoke College.  She spoke of the importance of having an upperclassman student mentor who helped her navigate her college experience as a female student pursuing a STEM field. Having role models and seeing others who have gone through the same experience helps girls as they embark on STEM careers.   Finally, the panelists addressed what can happen if we do not have diverse teams designing and developing products.  For example, in the 1960s, crash test protocols were created using crash dummies modeled after the average male because most car designers were men. As a result, cars safety features were far less effective for women. While things are getting better, we still have a long way to go.  Thamina Christensen shared her experience as the only female and the manager of a software design team and explained why having her voice on the team helps others see different points of view and ultimately make the products better.   Overall, the audience enjoyed the panel and it sparked interesting conversation around diversity in computer science education and the technology industry. Our next stop is CSTA 2018 in Omaha Nebraska! If you are scheduled to be there, stop by our booth to say hello! We would love to hear from you! Content contribution by Cassi Elliott, Danielle Ferretti, and Tyra Crockett  

On February 22nd, Oracle Academy arrived in Baltimore, MD for the #SIGCSE2018 conference.  We had the opportunity to speak to amazing Computer Science teachers, both higher education faculty and K12...