On April 20, Andrey Vorobyev, Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, took part in a meeting of the Expert Council on Digital Economy and Blockchain Technologies at the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy, Industry, Innovative Development and Entrepreneurship. The meeting participants discussed staff training in the digital world and the challenges facing the modern education system: the need to build an educational ecosystem and to formulate new approaches to the learning process and requirements for future specialists. They also shared their experience in creating innovative training programs.
In his remarks, Andrey Vorobyev spoke about areas of the Coordination Center’s educational activities. He noted that the Center’s educational initiatives can be divided into three sections. The first is permanent projects, some of which were launched back in 2009, when Russia was hosting the Year of Safer Internet. They are aimed at increasing the digital skills of users and teaching them the basic rules of digital hygiene. Such projects include the Explore the Internet & Govern It! Russian online championship, lessons on safe internet and digital literacy at schools, and many more.
The second major section is projects aimed at building human resources for the IT and domain name industry. The flagships of this area are the development and implementation of a standard domestic module for IT study at the Russian Association of Networks and Services (RANS) department at MTUCI and the organization of practical experience for students of specialized universities. The Coordination Center also pays great attention to personnel training for work on international platforms. For example, the Summer School on Internet Governance was launched in 2020, and in April 2021, Russia’s first youth internet governance forum, Youth RIGF 2021, was held.
“Based on the results of the first safer internet lessons, we realized that in order to comprehensively improve media literacy in Russia, it is necessary to educate not only children and adolescents, but also parents and teachers. They are primarily responsible for safety and children’s first successful experience on the internet, which determines all further behavioral experience on the internet. I believe that teaching competent and safe use of the internet should be introduced to the school curriculum with uniform standards of teaching and learning, and we ask the relevant committee of the State Duma to support such an initiative,” said Andrey Vorobyev.
