The Academy was attended by teachers, school principals, heads of education departments of Lviv region, as well as representatives of educational environments from Donetsk, Vinnytsia and Volyn regions.
As a reminder, the LOVA Department of Education and Science conducts Educational Academies for educators from Lviv region and other regions with the aim of raising their professional level, creating an opportunity to exchange experience on relevant topics, in particular, distance learning, development of vocational education, quality education in districts and communities.
The Educational Academy for the Development of Distance and Mixed Learning in Educational Institutions started on August 9 in Truskavets.
The organizers of the Academy are the Department of Education and Science of the Lviv Regional State University, the Center for Innovative Educational Technologies of the Lviv Polytechnic National University. The direct coordinator of the Academy and its initiator was the Ukrainian Distance School (UDSh), which was launched in Lviv in March 2022, with the aim of organizing access to education for all schoolchildren. UDSH was organized on a volunteer basis with the direct support of the Lviv OVA and the Department of Education and Science.
“There was a need to remotely teach children who arrived en masse in Lviv region, and the teachers of the region responded to our call,” says Iryna Sislyuk, head of the department’s preschool, general secondary education and extracurricular work department.
Today, UDSH, which already had its second graduation this year, gives Ukrainian children the opportunity to get a Ukrainian education, no matter where they are. Margarita Noskova, director of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, acted as the main moderator of the Educational Academy.
The main topics of the educational seminar, which took place during the Academy: to openly discuss the state of affairs in the field of education on the example of specific schools and regions; innovative approaches in education, the advantages and risks they generate; exchange experience in the implementation of distance and mixed learning; systematic continuous training of educators, creation of motivations for this; the formation of educational environments that would act as expert groups, stimulate and inspire work.
As the director of the department of education and science of LOVA, Oleg Paska, emphasized, any innovation in education must meet three criteria: respect for the dignity of the student, the formation of respect for the teacher, and the promotion of learning efficiency. Instead, according to him, ideas are often thrown into society just for the sake of self-promotion. Without prior professional analysis, without discussion in professional environments.
“Your children are at least two years ahead of ours, especially in science. Recently, we hear this thesis every time from our foreign colleagues. Therefore, the war will obviously force us to reassess our capabilities, take a different look at our potential. Of course, we still need to improve a lot, but these should not be drastic and forceful changes. Before implementation, they should be really discussed in all environments, because no one knows the needs of a student better than a teacher,” Oleha Paska added.
As a positive example, Oleg Paska named the Education Development Strategy of the Lviv region.
“It was written by groups of professional people who represented preschools, elementary, basic and high schools, extracurriculars, vocational education and partly higher education. Based on it, the Education Development Program of the Lviv Region for 2020-2025 was formed.
The same applies to distance education, it should be developed and improved first of all by practicing teachers, better experts than them cannot be found, and it is during such educational meetings that new ideas and incentives to work are born, we need work that gives results,” he reminded .
Margarita Noskova focused her attention precisely on the topic of distance learning.
“Modern education is fundamentally changing, and what seemed like an innovation 5-7 years ago is already becoming traditional today. Teaching children using various forms, methods, and technologies is already the norm, not a challenge, not a necessity. This is just our norm. Distance education is already becoming traditional. In the meantime, we need to shift the emphasis a little: now we need to teach students and their parents to learn. So that the parents themselves help us teach their children, and not panic where there is no reason to panic,” said the founder of UDS.
At the same time, she added that in order for distance learning to become an automatic skill, it is necessary to constantly develop, to formulate digital literacy as an urgent need, and then it will have an effect and allow creating an appropriate environment of educated people.
Dmytro Kostenko, the head of the education department of the Velikonovosilkiv village community (Donetsk region, Volnovaskyi district, 35 km from the front line) noted that distance learning of schoolchildren in the Donetsk region began to be implemented in 2015, when the task arose not to lose children who ended up in the temporarily occupied territory .
At first there were 5 basic distance schools, but then (due to covid) the Donetsk Institute of Postgraduate Education started mass courses on improving the digital skills of teachers and organizing distance learning.
“Therefore, when the large-scale invasion began, the education system of the Donetsk region was more or less ready to