On June 29, the international conference ITO 2023 "Modern Information Technologies in Education", which took place online, ended. More than 700 teachers and representatives of the education sector took part in it.
On the first day of the conference, June 28, the Head of the project department of the Coordination Center and the Head of social projects of the Center Olga Yakovleva, together with the Vice-Rector for Digital Development and Denis Mishin, Information Security of the Vladimir Institute for the Development of Education named after L.I. Novikova, took part in the IT workshop for teachers. They presented the educational project "Study the Internet & Govern It!", which helps to increase the digital literacy of students in a playful way and is a useful tool for teachers. Denis Mishin spoke about the practice of using project resources in advanced training courses for teachers in the Vladimir region: “We try to give not trivial things necessary for the work of teachers, which they already know about, but we suggest using digital technologies, in particular, the tools "Study the Internet & Govern It!" and even hold a regional classification within the framework of the Project Championship”. 33 teams took part from the Vladimir region in the latest Championship "Study the Internet & Govern It!", 25 of which were school teams and 8 were teams of secondary vocational education. Also, the Vladimir Institute for the Development of Education, together with the Coordination Center, held a regional competition to develop an educational resource for the development of digital literacy for the platform "Study the Internet & Govern It!".
“There are categories of teachers who, in principle, reject digitalization. They are poorly motivated to use new technologies in the educational process. After we offered them to go through the educational games on the project portal themselves, they answered that they went through much more than we asked. Projects such as "Study the Internet & Govern It!" serve as a good motivation for teachers and cover their need for quality materials for extracurricular activities and classroom hours, as well as materials for the teachers themselves and their students,” Denis Mishin added.
The section "IT in inclusive education" was held on the second day of the conference. Olga Yakovleva spoke about the module for optically challenged users in the interactive project "Study the Internet & Govern It!". She noted that the Coordination Center began work on a special module in December 2021. The project organizers turned to the social entrepreneurial project EVERLAND for help, which helps people with disabilities integrate into the open labor market, get support, get training and find a job. As a result of assessing the accessibility of the project site for blind users, it turned out that it contains a large number of interactive elements and images. Then, in addition to developing a version of the website for optically challenged, it was decided to make a separate module for blind users. It contains the correct markup of the page structure, content, sound and text description of pictures for the compatibility of the website with screen readers - special programs that help blind users to work with the website.
“The module for the optically challenged on our project portal is a great example of how educational projects can be accessible to people with certain visual impairments. We have passed a voluntary certification for the accessibility of the website игра-интернет.рф for people with disabilities and received a certificate of conformity. We hope that our experience will serve as a useful example for developers of educational programs and projects for the development of an accessible educational environment,” Olga Yakovleva added.
For 34 years, the conference has brought together more than 20,000 specialists from different regions of Russia and neighboring countries. The conference was organized by the Administration of the Troitsk City District, the Department of Entrepreneurship and Innovative Development of the City of Moscow, the Foundation for New Technologies in Education "BAYTIK". The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ has traditionally become a partner of the conference.
