To the Future: How Digital Technology Changes Education

Children learning how to use 3D pens at the Engineering New Year 2.0 quest held in Italy. The event also took place in Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Romania, and Serbia.

At first, the kids mastered 2D modeling and then switched to more complicated 3D models. They also took part in workshops on additive technologies, circuit engineering, and augmented reality.

Primary school students made New Year presents for their parents and families at the digital quest.

French schoolchildren take part in a workshop on additive technologies, circuit engineering, and augmented reality. They scanned QR codes to learn new facts about electricity and AR.

Cyber Book is another project helping children to gain knowledge about digital technology. It is a digital textbook on programming designed to help kids aged between 11 and 16 to improve their digital skills. While playing, children can learn C#, a professional programming language.

“The Cyber Book project was born out of a burning desire to help gifted children learn breakthrough technologies, such as virtual and augmented reality, and artificial intelligence, because these markets will develop for at least 50 years. We develop and teach VR/AR and AI without intermediaries. Today we continue building up a community of developers based on market orders. We also work as personal managers for talented children. The project is an opportunity to ensure continuous learning of IT technologies starting from school,” said Roman Povolotsky, the project’s founder and head.

VR skills can be demonstrated at the hackathon, a forum for developers. The finals of the Composite Battle VR international hackathon was held at Bauman Moscow State Technical University as part of the Key Trends in Composites: Science and Technology International Forum. Its participants found out about the work of a composite engineer and the industry’s prospects.

“Participating in the hackathon was a great opportunity to get to know the basics of how vacuum infusion technology works. Of course, today the app with VR does not reflect all the fine points of the process and can’t be a substitute for real lab work. It’s also clear that the app will develop and get more complicated along with the advancement of VR technologies. For example, creating gloves to be used as manipulators to simulate the vacuum infusion process will be a breakthrough,” said Yulia Zakladni, a participant from Berlin, Germany.

Various countries hold events to help teachers learn digital technology. For example, at the Knowledge Up! International Contest in Moscow, teachers shared their experience in using digital technology in the classroom.

Kamil Dankiewicz from Poland, speaking at the Knowledge Up! International Contest in Moscow, said: “I believe I will use the participants’ projects that I’ve seen here in my everyday work.”

More than 600 participants from eight countries took part in the first International Teaching Conference Training for the Digital Economy. According to the organisers, the conference is aimed at finding answers to practical questions of the digitalisation process.

“The digital environment in education has just started developing and is unequally distributed. This makes partnership very valuable both within our sector and between sectors. By creating a digital space within educational institutions and among them, we help education to become more up to date and to comply with the latest agenda and trends in HR training for the digital economy,” the organisers said.

“We shouldn’t worry about IT - IT can’t replace teachers in any way. It is a tool in their hands that can be very effective because it can save a lot of time and effort and free them from routine processes. Children understand this tool very well because today they discover the world in a different way from us. They discover it through IT. This is a way for us to communicate with our children and be more interesting for them. This is why we should not be afraid of it but use it,” said Ilya Novokreshchyonov, Head of the Directorate for Developing Education System Human Resources of the Moscow Education and Science Department.

The VR and AR Day project helps children from different cities and countries to understand virtual reality. The event’s main goal is to show them up-to-date IT technologies and develop their digital competencies.

“One of the event’s goals is to get young people interested; to show these future experts that there are companies already working with virtual reality - not only the media, but also large businesses that use VR and AR, for example, for training,” said Daler Fatykhov, Head of Rossiya Segodnya Experimental Projects Centre.