The Conference on Modern ICT in Education (ITO Moscow-Troitsk), devoted to the use of new IT technologies in education has been held for over 30 years. For the third time, the conference was held online, which made it possible to expand the audience and make the event accessible for teachers who could not attend in person. For reference: the most spacious conference hall in Troitsk, which used to host the conference, can accommodate some 300 people, while the previous online event brought together some 1,700 participants from Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Cyprus, Poland and Uzbekistan.
Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ Andrey Vorobyev noted that during its history, this annual event has brought together over 18,000 teachers from 19 countries, most particularly those who work with information technology and actively use it in the education process.
“The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ is a longstanding partner of the conference and is actively involved in issues related to improving digital literacy, which cannot be done without the teaching community,” the Coordination Center director said when opening the conference.
The first day of the conference opened with a plenary session where IT and education experts delivered reports. Head of the Troitsk City District in Moscow Vladimir Dudochkin delivered opening remarks and noted that such longstanding conferences are a rare thing. Founder and CEO of Cognitive Technologies Olga Uskova told the audience about the current revolutionary period that opens numerous opportunities for self-fulfillment.
Department Head at the Moscow State Pedagogical University Andrei Naumov, Professor and associate member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, head of the Troitsk Autonomous Subdivision of the Lebedev Institute of Physics, spoke about the research and educational projects by Russian Academy of Sciences professors, while Andrey Sebrant, strategic marketing director at Yandex, gave a report on metaverses.
The conference program also featured various poster presentations, the roundtable Trends in Coding Education, an IT workshop for teachers, and six themed sections dedicated to informatics and programming, information technologies for primary school teachers, teachers of the humanities and natural sciences, training engineers and teachers of the future, as well as the use of IT in inclusive education.
Head of the Coordination Center Project Department Olga Yakovleva spoke at the Informatics and Programming session. She told the audience about the center’s education projects designed to familiarize children with the internet and help them develop digital hygiene. In particular, she presented the Explore the Internet & Govern It! education project designed to give schoolchildren knowledge about information technologies and improve their digital literacy through participating in games, in a fun format. The project tournaments, championships, quizzes, a glossary and mobile app are useful not only to school students, but also teachers who can use these interactive technologies in the education process.
To allow teachers and other conference participants to learn more about the opportunities provided by the interactive website игра-интернет.рф, participation in the Explore the Internet & Govern It! tournament and other educational and social projects of the Coordination Center, a virtual stand of the Coordination Center was presented at the exhibition.
Olga Yakovleva also spoke about the Coordination Center’s joining the Digital Ethics of Childhood charter whose participants bear a collective responsibility for the security of children in the digital environment and create an atmosphere of trust and support at various stages of the child’s interaction with the digital space.
“The digital environment is becoming a living environment of modern people and the interaction with it requires certain skills. Learning through play is a natural process for children and teenagers, while teachers have a quite complex task of mastering an entire range of digital practices and strategies, including them in their toolkit and using the most relevant of them in their activity,” Olga Yakovleva added.
Executive Director of the Bytic Foundation – one of the conference organizers – Darya Kalabukhova said that the Smart World by the Hands of Children nationwide children’s conference is being held simultaneously with the adult conference. At the children’s event, preschoolers, school students and university students present their projects and developments in IT. The conference marks its 5th anniversary this year.
The ITO Moscow-Troitsk is Russia’s oldest international conference on the use of information technology in education. Over the years since 1990, it has had various organizers such as the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, the Moscow Region Ministry of Education, the Moscow Department of Education, the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education, the Moscow Institute of Open Education, ANO ITO and others.
You can find all the conference materials on the website 2022-ito.bytic.ru.
