The project to hook schools up to the Internet has gained momentum, and by the end of the year all schools will be connected," reported First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to President Putin in early June. He also assured the President that implementation of the National Education Project was going according to plan.
According to its creators, the new education portal ‘Unified Collection of Digital Educational Resources,' will eventually outperform even the great Lenin Library in its heyday. An online treasure-trove of books will be accessible at any time and to anyone. All Russian students will have the opportunity to enjoy a quality, contemporary education, while teachers will be able to use novel, digital teaching aids such as interactive technologies, multimedia, modeling, communications and data-processing software.
From A to Z
According to the developers, the project's database will be constantly replenished. The education portal already contains over 20,000 resources for 20 general-education subjects. "In the first instance, we want to provide teachers and pupils with sufficient new study aids," Svetlana Avdeyeva, director of the Online Education System project, told MN. "Advanced teaching methods that orient teachers toward modern approaches and teaching technologies are posted on the net."
Prior to launching the Online Education System project in 2002-2004, Russia already had quite a massive base of digital educational resources on offer to the country's schools. However, a survey conducted by World Bank experts showed that these resources were practically never used. According to a poll of teachers, this was due to the resource's inconvenient format. So the architects of the Online Education System project sought to create a complete integrated course. They found that teachers, confined by training to a specific subject, were often unable to single out the necessary items relevant to their subject, such as the model of a physical phenomenon, a chemical process, or a lab experiment. Another problem preceding the launch was a lack of methodological guidance for teachers on how to use the resources in the classroom.
Despite the fact that the integrated course was comprehensive, teachers were unable to use it to explain new material to the pupils. That is why the project's developers subsequently created an innovative digital resource: a new generation database of teaching aids. This resource includes items like a quatrain as well as copies of Repin's painting ‘Barge Haulers on the Volga,' or Van Gogh's ‘The Starry Night'. This resource can also be a virtual physics lab for modeling physical processes or for conducting scientific experiments.
Get It for Free!
Currently, the new education portal ‘Unified Collection of Digital Educational Resources' includes numerous thematic texts, illustrations, diagrams, sound files, videos, historical and geographical maps and instruments for constructing graphs. Teachers have access to various guides for preparing and teaching lessons. And most importantly, any school can use the portal and download the necessary materials free of charge.
"Toward 2008, we plan to replenish the Unified Collection with 75,000 resources and the number will grow continuously," explained Svetlana Avdeyeva of the Online Education System project, "because we need to sustain pupils' interest in acquiring knowledge by themselves, through deeper study of the subject."
The project's data are good until June 2008, but specialists say that the work can never be completed as standards and materials constantly go out of date and need to be replaced. This creates a constant expenditure item in the state budget. "To date, some $2 million have been invested in the project," Avdeyeva said. "This money goes into the purchase of resources from our partners. For example, the contract to buy reproductions of artwork from the Tretyakov Gallery cost us $38,000. We paid the Melodia studio $60,000 for a collection of Russian musical archives, both classic and contemporary. And we paid Sony $300,000 for a complete collection of contemporary Western music, with all rights to their use as we see fit. We also do business with Mosfilm and are negotiating with the Russian Museum."
According to the experts, now that it has created the Unified Collection of Digital Educational Resources, Russia is ahead of the rest of the world. Western analogues are mostly created by commercial firms interested in selling their products to schools and teachers, thus access to them is not free. In Russia the creation of any educational resource is funded by the state and teachers themselves can contribute to the unified educational collection. In Britain, for instance, the concept of a "state-sponsored collection" does not exist. There, schools and teachers have sites of their own; online teachers' communities host exchanges of solutions. When the international experts assessed the progress of Russia's Online Education System project, they and the World Bank were pleasantly surprised to learn that Russian schoolteachers enjoy free access.
Looking ahead
Education and Science Minister Andrei Fursenko projected optimistically: "In the near future, schoolchildren will be able to do their lab assignments in physics, chemistry, and biology at home. During lessons, teachers and pupils, with the aid of an interactive blackboard, will be able to visit Russian and foreign museums. Children living in remote villages will get the opportunity to attend lectures by the country's best teachers."
For his part, Leonid Reiman, Minister for Communications and Information, has promised to provide even the remotest communities in Russia with telephone services, which should link them to the Internet. To some people, however, such bright prospects seem unreal. Alexei Chernyshev, State Duma deputy and vice chairman of the Duma Committee for Education and Science said: "We'll live and see. To me, such prospects are an illusion that has gripped our minds. I've recently been to a village not so far from Moscow. There I saw children taking the village's sole computer to their teacher's home so that it would not be stolen. The villagers are not thinking of the internet at all. You call this computerization? They lack even basic visual aids. Many rural schools in Russia are still heated with firewood or coal, and the only accessible telephone is several miles away from the school. In such rural areas, fast internet connections and digital educational resources
are out of the question - even if Communications Minister Leonid Reiman fixes every God-forsaken little village with telephones."
Of course it is necessary for Russian citizens living in remote areas to have computers and Internet access, just as they had to have electricity at one time. However, connecting those places to the internet is a remote prospect. Schools in remote areas first need to acquire essential audio-visual teaching aids. Such apparently simple aids are cheap, reliable and went a long way toward the primary education of First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Communications Minister Leonid Reiman and many other intelligent and respected citizens.
By Yekaterina Rozhayeva
