“Young Developers” and how 51st Highschool “Elisaveta Bagryana” became part of the Virtual Reality

11 July, 2021

The event “Young Developers” was held on June 24th in the capital’s 51st Highschool “Elisaveta Bagryana”, where eighth grade students presented their projects prepared during the free elective extracurricular activities – “Development of games and applications for Virtual Reality, computers and mobile devices on Unity3d”

The event was opened by Vasil Anastasov, a graduate of 51st Highschool, developer and entrepreneur, as well as the creator of the project “DevHubOne”. Already for four years in a row, he shares his knowledge as a teacher at the school.

The projects presented during the occasion were prepared during the school year 2020/21 and are still under development, they will be presented once again after their finalisation. There are four ideas developed, which are the following:

360 Virtual Tour – made for the 51st Highschool “Elisaveta Bagryana” virtual tour, where the school can be viewed on the basis of 360-degree photos.

LowPoly Math – an application designed for mobile devices in order to study geometric bodies, their formulas, as well as providing the unfolding of each geometric body that can be assembled by the user.

VR Art Gallery – an interactive virtual gallery located on a platform in space, with paintings painted by students of the 51st Highschool “Elisaveta Bagryana”

2D Interactive Coloring Book – a new concept on the market, in order to learn the letters, words and colors in English, along with a soundtrack for their pronunciation. The book consists of two parts (physical and digital), and the idea is for the child to practice several times in the digital format before coloring what is confirmed in the physical book.

The initiative of the school to develop in the direction of Virtual Reality (VR) begins at the end of 2017, and in early 2018, the director of the 51st Highschool “Elisaveta Bagryana” equips two classrooms with three pairs of glasses for Virtual Reality and buys computers to develop VR applications.

Over the years, students’ interest in Virtual Reality was growing, Vasil Anastasov became a Unity Certified Developer and at the end of 2018 the 8th grade students officially started their education as an extracurricular activity. Later in 2019 launches the international project “A-Maze-In” to create an Escape Room game, which involves four countries – Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, and the Czech Republic. Representatives of the Bulgarian team were the students from the 51st Highschool with team leader Vasil Anastasov and despite the fact that they were the youngest in the competition, they had a leading role in finalising the game.

The presentation “Young Developers” ended with the words of Vasil Anastasov:

“Today in many places you can listen and read about innovations in education, its practical side, concepts, theories and so on, but if you want to see how it is done, welcome to our school!”