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Over the past six months, a unique experiment has taken place – millions of children around the world have switched to digital education overnight. What problems did the pandemic reveal in this area, how to solve them, will countries return to traditional education, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of online education? About Nargis Sheki told Alexander Molchanov – expert of UNESCO Institute for information technologies in education.

Are children ready to work independently?
AM: in our country, both children and adults do not know how to learn independently, that is, they do not know how to set goals for themselves, they do not know how to track their own progress along the educational route. This is one of the biggest problems. When the pandemic hit and children switched to remote work mode, they were required to make their own decisions: what time to get up to start homework on time, what to do, whether to do homework if no one checks. There was a flurry of such problems.

Technical issue
On the other hand, technical problems were identified, primarily the congestion of communication channels. All universities, all schools started classes at the same time, of course, the providers did not have enough communication channels, which affected the quality of the "picture".

If the Humanities are even more or less good - you can turn off the cameras, and the teacher can tell you everything he wanted to tell, then in most school subjects, in most engineering disciplines, in exact Sciences - where formulas are used and the meaning of the entire lesson depends on writing a tiny degree-it turned out that this is a big problem.

Do I need to do my homework if no one checks

The next order of problems is the degree of trust in digital technologies. These are more philosophical issues. People are afraid to open up to digital technologies, they are afraid to use the same Zoom or some other digital platforms. They think that someone will be watching, eavesdropping, and someone must steal something. Although, in principle, what can be stolen in ordinary classes, well, except for the knowledge that I would like to get into the heads of students.

Not everyone has a computer, not everyone has a good tablet on which you can watch high-quality online courses

Experts also mentioned a number of other problems, in particular the availability of devices. Not everyone has a computer, not everyone has a good tablet on which you can watch high-quality online courses and go to different platforms. This problem cannot be solved quickly, because a good computer is quite expensive.

At the same time, parents went to remote work with students. Therefore, the number of computers in a family should be equal to the number of people living in one area. And this is a very large unplanned expenditure for the family, and not everyone was able to create technical conditions.

The technique of online learning
It is possible to allocate a separate block of problems. This is a distance learning technique. This is a pedagogical problem: how best to teach a particular subject using remote technologies. Unfortunately, there were no developed or implemented methods. In recent years, as an expert At the UNESCO Institute of information technologies in education, I have conducted a lot of seminars, spoken at various conferences, and participated in the organization of the conference of the Moscow international salon of education.

Unfortunately, there were no developed or implemented methods

We discussed this topic of distance learning and various digital technologies in the educational process. But, unfortunately, conversations are conversations, and a massive pandemic, when almost all teachers should have been able to use these technologies, it revealed that not everyone can, not everyone can, and as a result, most of them were trained in the process of switching to a remote work format.

NS: you first mentioned that children should be able to control when they Wake up and whether they will do the task if no one checks it. But the consciousness of children is not always counted on. How do you exercise control at the same level as in school?

AM: what happened during the pandemic was a simple translation of offline methods of work, traditional methods of work, into a remote format. This is basically the wrong approach to digitalization of education: ordinary traditional classes cannot be equally effective when the teacher goes to the blackboard, when all the children are distracted from the home atmosphere, they have reached school yet, they have switched to a completely different process, they have classmates there, there is a social environment. They want to look better in front of their classmates and each other. Therefore, they already have a certain learning environment, a motivating environment that leads to more intensive, deeper learning of the subject.

How to make a child learn
In the situation with distance learning, what happens? The child is at home, in a comfortable environment for him, but the environment in which he usually rests, usually he plays. He picks up a gadget, smartphone or laptop, with which he, traditionally, again has fun. And he should use this tool for a completely new type of activity. There are his parents nearby, food, tea and everything else in front of him. In this homely atmosphere, in his protected world, he must begin to study with the same intensity as he did at school. This can never happen! It just can't. This is a different format of work.

Advantages of distance learning
Experts, based on the experience of more than twenty years of distance learning, note that the beauty of distance learning is in individual trajectories, in the individual pace of work: one child is comfortable to Wake up at 8 o'clock in the morning, have a Cup of tea and do, for example, math or history. For others, this is an uncomfortable mode, they want to sleep a little longer and start working out at 12 or even later. Someone wants to pass math in one day – that's their character structure, they want to immerse themselves in the material. Unfortunately, the format of work that was developed during the pandemic did not provide such an opportunity for children. And these are exactly the basics that should have been taken into account.

The beauty of distance learning is in individual trajectories, in the individual pace of work

On the other hand, it is also a very interesting situation that I observed. I had three school children in front of me, of different ages. It turned out that for them, even the effect of the bell itself, when a child comes to school, the bell rings - for him it is a signal to start a serious intensive work. Some experts noted that most children do not really want to learn. And the environment that is created at school, it forces these guys, motivates them to acquire knowledge.

And at home, the child needs to learn to make an effort on himself, force himself to watch a training video, watch the teacher's speech, and be sure to delve into the content. Understand that from the moment he closes the program or exits Zoom, he should start practical work. He should open the notebook and start doing something there on his own. In fact, this is hard work, and the children were simply not ready for this work. It turned out that there was no one at home to help with building a work schedule.

Most parents do not have pedagogical skills, do not know how to choose words in order to motivate the child to educational activities. Many are good parents, many are good friends to their children, but a friend and a good parent will never replace a teacher who knows how this should be done, what psychological techniques should be used, how to motivate the child, and how to push the child away from achieving the goal. I think that pedagogical universities have a lot of work to do in order to analyze everything that happened during the pandemic and review many approaches to pedagogical science.

NS: do you think that children will return to their desks, or will some segment of learning take place online?

AM: first of all, the children have already returned to their desks, and many of them are very happy to return to school. Last year was very difficult for them – they did not go to school for a whole quarter and did not communicate with their peers, and for them this is a social environment. They will definitely go to school. Many experts noted that schools as centers of additional education, as centers of socialization of children, as centers of communication should be preserved.

The question is that most teachers will probably use digital tools, for example, for holding parent-teacher meetings. There is no need to distract all parents, you can hold a meeting remotely. All organizational work can be done remotely. This is the first thing.

Secondly, teachers finally found the time and opportunity to explore the possibilities of various educational digital projects, such as <url>, ya-Klass, Yandex-textbook, and many others, and see how certain tools can be used and which ones are effective. For a teacher, this is the most important task: to find a tool that makes it easier to explain the material to the child and build communication with them in a more accessible form. Of course, social networks and various chats are now very tightly integrated into life and communication, including between teachers. Therefore, to say that we will return to traditional education, which was, say, at the beginning of last year-no, we will not return.

There will be no going back to the past
Traditional education is becoming different. Digital tools are registered in it seriously and for a long time. Now the main question is to develop the correct methods of working with these tools, train teachers to work with these tools, and, of course, remove social inequality, when some children may have the latest gadgets, but other children, unfortunately, do not have this opportunity. Well, we have to work hard enough with communication channels and providers to ensure that every school and every region has a fairly stable Internet connection and has the opportunity to study the subject not only in an offline format, in the school building, but also in a remote format.

Image - TheirWorld / UN / N.Sheki

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