▲SK Telecom has been awarded the Global Corporate Award in the E-education category at the ICT Event, the ITU Telecom World 2017 Awards for their Smart Robot Coding School, an educational software program.

SK Telecom led by President and CEO, Park Jung-Ho, has been awarded the Global Corporate Award in the E-education category at the ICT Event, the ITU Telecom World 2017 Awards for their Smart Robot Coding School, an educational software program. The even was at held at BEXCO in Busan.

The Global Corporate Award is given to a company who offers the most promising and innovative solution in terms of social impact.

The ITU 2017 Awards were hosted by the UN-affiliated ICT organization ITU. This year for the first time the organization recognized the contributions to society made by large corporations. Winners were selected from three categories: E-education, E-health, and Smart emerging technologies. SKT’s Smart Robot Coding School won the award in the education category for its contribution to the development of software education for children all over the world.

▲ SKT Smart Robot 'Albert'

The Smart Robot Coding School, launched by SK Telecom in February 2014, was developed to help children aged 6 to 10 in software education. By using the Smart Robot Albert and other devices such as smart phones, tablets, and other smart devices, this product helps children to understand mathematical concepts to more easily learn coding, a vital component of the software development process.

Since its release, the Smart Robot Coding School has expanded into France, Spain and other European countries, as well as China, Taiwan, Vietnam in Asia, and Paraguay and Costa Rica in South America, where it has been enthusiastically received. Currently, students in 250 primary schools in 20 countries use the “Smart Robot Coding School” to learn about software. Over 20,000 Smart Robot Albert have been exported abroad.

In December 2015, the “Smart Robot Coding School” was recognized by a forerunner in coding, the US, by winning the prestigious “Reimagine Education 2015” award sponsored by Wharton School-QS in the elementary and middle school category. In the same month, it won a merit award at the “Software Education Festival” sponsored by the Korean government for the advances they made in software education and global advancement.

▲ SKT New Coding Robot 'UO Albert'

The response to SK Telecom has been favorable, as they provide easy and fun software training through reasonably priced smart robots. The company has said that it will double down on their efforts to provide even better software education with UO Albert, the upgraded version of Albert.

UO Albert, SK’s new robot for coding, won the Red Dot Award, one of the most prestigious design awards in the world.

Coding education will be mandatory for Korean middle school students starting from 2018 and for fifth and sixth graders in primary school starting from 2019. The UK has been offering coding classes as part of their formal curriculum for Primary, Middle and High schools, while Israel has been offering Computer Science education since 1994.