Norshen village in Martuni region of Artsakh has several centuries of history, nearly 300 residents, and 80 households. The main occupation is agriculture: animal husbandry and farming. Teach For Armenia fellow Ara Harutyunyan arrived in Norshen in September 2017. Almost a year later, he says the village can change the profile and become the technological center of Artsakh.

A design engineer by profession, Ara works as physics teacher and leads the national dance club at Norshen school, which has only 54 students.

Ara decided to place buttons on the desks to make the lessons more entertaining and interactive: when he asks a question, the students have to push on the button if they want to answer it. The teacher’s desk features a light that turns on when a button is pushed. Ara pitched this idea to Awesome Foundation, won the contest and created NorShenLab with the prize money. 

Photo: Ara Harutyunyan’s archive

Pupils were enthusiastic about the new method and Ara started thinking of a robotics laboratory, where he could teach the kids technologies. Director of Union of Information Technology Enterprises Karen Vardanyan helped Ara acquire the equipment, and in January 2018, Armath engineering laboratory opened in Norshen school. It was the 9th Armath lab in Artsakh.

Photo: Ara Harutyunyan’s archive

“We have two groups, which we called after programming languages: Fox and Turtle. It was a novelty, so we had many children at first and then some of them left the lab. Fox group works on game development, but when we start doing more difficult things like designing and driving robots, some kids see they don’t have sufficient knowledge and leave. Nevertheless, anyone can sign up for our club,” said Ara.

Photo: Ara Harutyunyan’s archive

Norshen students have tangible success to show, for instance, a methodology lab in the school’s biology class. With some help from Ara the kids coded a program and won a contest with it. Recently, they participated in the robotics competition “Maze Solver” at COAF SMART Center and finished second. Norshen students are the only Artsakh representatives at Sevan Startup Summit and they will participate in DigiCamp as well.

Photo: Ara Harutyunyan’s archive

Encouraged by his students’ achievements, Ara suggested to Artsakh Minister of Education and Science Narine Aghabalyan to turn Norshen into the technological center of Artsakh, host exhibitions, tech forums and discussions there. The first step would be to organize ArtsakhTechExpo, currently under consideration. 

If everything goes smoothly, the expo will take place in late October in Artsakh capital, Stepanakert (Norshen’s bad roads and poor infrastructure make it impossible to hold the expo there).

Photo: Ara Harutyunyan’s archive

“Firstly, the expo will create competition between tech companies in Artsakh and help the country get representation in the world of technologies. Secondly, the public will become interested in the sector, which is going to make the word “technology” more tangible for the people. They will come to the expo, see new things and decide their children could learn that and work in IT if they wanted. ArtsakhTechExpo will also have a good impact on education because Armath lab will be among the participants, so we can expect the instructors to be motivated to work more actively,” noted Ara.

All technological companies from Artsakh and Armenia can take part in ArtsakhTechExpo by applying beforehand to artcakhtechexpo@gmail.com. The organizers anticipate investors to attend the expo as well.

Lusine Gharibyan 

Photos: Ara Harutyunyan’s archive