The Explore the Internet mentorship school opened the application period for its fourth session. This is an additional professional advanced training program for teachers, undergraduate and postgraduate students specializing in teaching studies, as well as other professionals working with children and young people.
The school was organized by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ together with the Academy of Innovative Education and Development on the basis of Explore the Internet & Govern It interactive educational project.
Taking part in the mentorship school helps:
- Get an insight into internet governance, the internet’s history, infrastructure, and internationalization, as well as digital technology, including AI, blockchain, IoT.
- Learn the rules for building digital infrastructure and staying safe online, as well as acquire new competences for teaching digital literacy.
- Acquire skills for introducing digital tools, including AI-powered solutions, into the educational process, as well as learn to make educational videos.
- Use the guiding principles and norms governing mentorship-related activities in professional undertakings.
Those who complete the course and pass a final exam will receive an official professional advanced training certificate, as well as a digital certificate of a Explore the Internet & Govern It Mentor. Successful participants will also be able to access a community of educational experts.
The school offers these training courses free of charge, but accepts only a limited number of participants. Those who want to apply must fill out the application form by March 23, listen an introductory lecture and take a short test. The organizers will choose the successful applications based on the test results.
“We always seek feedback from our graduates before launching the next session of the mentorship school to understand what lectures they liked, whether the way experts presented their materials suited them, and what topics they missed during the program. Overall, we want to know whether this was a useful, interesting and fulfilling experience for our students. For this fourth session, we have substantially expanded the Cyber Security bloc by working with experts from F6, a Russian developer of cyber security solutions. We have also added two topics at the request of our mentors. An expert will cover the topic of using AI for creating learning materials, as well as the approaches, rules and methods for creating learning videos. We hope that these workshops help schoolteachers and faculty members at secondary vocational colleges and universities improve the way they teach their courses by giving them a modern twist, making them interactive and taking into account the cognitive capabilities of our students, who are part of the digital generation,” Head of the Coordination Center’s project department Olga Yakovleva said.
The fourth session of the Explore the Internet mentorship school will begin on April 1 and will run through June. It will take place online using GetCourse and VK platforms.
Participants will have to take an exam to complete the course by creating a lesson or drafting guidelines on the studied topics using tools from the Explore the Internet & Govern It Project. The timetable, webinar topics and lists of experts are available on the school’s website.
In 2024, the Explore the Internet school was recognized as part of the Runet Prize, a national award for achievements in high technology and internet, in the Education and Human Resources category. Launched in December 2023, the mentorship school trained over 200 teachers across 60 regions of Russia. Most of the applicants have university degrees and teach computer science in schools and higher education institutions. There were also many applications from math and physics teachers, as well as from teachers of biology, foreign languages, music, Russian and literature.
