Over two years, a pedagogical skills competition dubbed "Upload Knowledge!" has united more than 200 enthusiastic teachers of Russian abroad who use digital technologies in the educational process.
The winner of last year's competition, a senior lecturer at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, Saini Sonu (India), noted that even after the end of the competition, the participants still maintain contact.
The competition's finalists even came together during the pandemic and held an international conference called "Online Studying: Today and Tomorrow", according to Saini Sonu.
"There was a great deal of interest, with more than 500 people joining us. A month later, we held the second International Conference on Innovative Digital Teaching. We are very happy that our developments have received tremendous support", he stressed.
Thanks to the international competition, the teachers have managed to create mobile applications for learning the Russian language, according to computer science teacher at the Amit School in Beer-Sheva and a finalist of "Upload Knowledge!" (2019), Frayman Zeev (Israel).
"I must say that an absolutely amazing thing has happened. One year has passed, and during this year I and my colleagues have managed to create six applications while continuing our communication in absentia, of course. Not a company with millions in budgets and dozens of designers and programmers, but ordinary teachers", he said.
A full-time festival of folk art crafts in the digital world was held in Germany and Cyprus within the framework of the project "Touch History - Traditional Folk Art Crafts - Digital Accessibility". A platform was created as well, depicting the history of Khokhloma, Gzhel, and Zhostovo paintings, including master classes from artists and interactive games.
An Electronic Library of Digital Cooperation has also been created to provide methodological support for teachers around the world.
"The library has a huge amount of materials: Russian folklore, historical literature, children's literature, fiction, newspapers and magazines, conference materials, dictionaries, and educational literature", said the Deputy Dean for International Affairs at the Department of Russian Language and Basic Disciplines from RUDN University Moscow, Elena Lavrova (Russia).
According to her, the platform has been used by teachers from more than 50 countries, the largest number of whom were from the United Kingdom, Germany, Greece, Spain, Italy, Russia, the US, Uzbekistan, the Czech Republic, and Sweden.
"As we now understand, all projects turned out to be of high quality and interesting. Rossotrudnichestvo has a large network of foreign missions abroad - 92 centres in 82 countries. And we are confident that after the end of grant financing from Rossotrudnichestvo, all these projects will continue to develop due to the assistance of our representatives abroad", said Pavel Shevtsov, the deputy head of Rossotrudnichestvo.
In mid-2019, Rossotrudnichestvo launched over 40 international projects for teachers and schoolchildren, students and young scientists around the world. In 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic, these projects received a positive development.
All projects were implemented within the framework of the federal project "Human Resources for the Digital Economy" under the national programme "Digital Economy of the Russian Federation".
