On Programmer’s Day, which was marked on September 12 this year, the Coordination Center for TLD RU/РФ (CC for TLD RU/РФ), the School of New Technologies and the Ad Hoc Commission on Information Society at the Federation Council held an offline part of the Study the Internet, Govern It contest in the editorial office of Parlamentskaya Gazeta.
The competition was between two teams, of school students and MPs. The team of members of parliament comprised Lyudmila Bokova, Chair of the Ad Hoc Commission on Information Society, and Vitaly Zlochevsky from the State Duma Committee for Public and Religious Organizations. Maxim Grigoryev, First Deputy Chair of the Civic Chamber’s Commission on Harmonization of Interethnic and Inter-Confessional Relations, attended subsequent discussions.
Each team answered ten questions on the structure and history of the Internet, IT services, the Internet culture and safe use of information technologies. The children and adults who took part in the competition learned a few interesting facts about the Internet, for example, that there are two national domains in Russia and that Cyrillic domains can be registered on one of them, .РФ. They also learned that Yandex is the most popular search engine on the Russian Internet, referred to as RuNet, while Google is the absolute leader in the world, and that it would take over a thousand years to watch all the videos on YouTube but by the time you finished, there would be one billion more uploaded videos. The student team won, proving again that the younger generation is more IT-friendly than adults.
“It is an interesting and instructive game. Questions can be changed to make it more complicated. Besides, it covers nearly all key aspects of the Internet, including information security,” Lyudmila Bokova said. “We have noticed over the past years that our children are very sensible and are aware of online dangers, such as trolling or cyberbullying. They have learned to meet and respond to these challenges.”
“The more people in Russia understand modern information technologies, the better,” Maxim Grigoryev said. “However, the Internet is not just a useful and convenient tool but is also often used for illegal activities.”
Grigoryev told the students about the efforts of the Civic Chamber to expose terrorists who use the Internet for recruitment. “Terrorists often use the Internet to spread extremist materials. I urge everyone, but especially children and teens, to report the resources that are involved in extremism to the Civic Chamber. We will use the assistance of law enforcement agencies to deal with such websites,” he said.
After the game ended, the teams received certificates of participation and booklets on the safe use of Internet technologies.
“We hope that you will not stop at that but will continue to improve your digital literacy, including through the Study the Internet, Govern It education module and training application,” the project’s coordinators told the winning team. “You will be able to test your knowledge in a competition against your peers at the annual online Study the Internet, Govern It contest.”
In 2016, the Study the Internet, Govern It contest will be held from October 1 to 31. The potential participants should register online by September 30 as an individual or as a team.
Lyudmila Bokova invited the students to take part in the Joint Web Security Lesson, which will be held across Russian schools from October 27 to 30. It will involve over 11 million school students from the fifth to eleventh grades. Teaching materials for this lesson have been posted on the website единыйурок.рф and are free for anyone to download.
“At these lessons, children will learn how to behave on the Net so as not to fall for a scam,” Bokova said, adding that experts on information security and information law can find very good jobs now.
For videos of the offline contest and the subsequent Q&A session when MPs answered school students’ questions about future education, go to the official channel of Parlamentskaya Gazeta on YouTube.
