From 13 to 22 August 2007 an Information Technologies Summer School took place at the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in Lviv, Ukraine. The basis of the school, held for the first time, was the instructional materials of the European method Teach-IT.net, the goal of which is to teach teachers in general education schools how to use information technologies in the instructional process and in their own education.
The Teach-IT.net method over the last three years was created and tested in the countries of its German, Finnish, and Polish educators-partners. UCU together with the KANA Catholic Youth Education Center (Poland) approximately a year ago started working on the Ukrainian version of the method. A large part of the materials (seven out of ten instructional modules) have already been translated into Ukrainian. However, just the translation itself is not sufficient so that this method can enter the Ukrainian environment. To start adapting it to Ukrainian realities, this Summer School was started. But in order to understand and test the method, it is necessary to use it in practice. “We are trying to work up from below. We want to test the method at the area level. We have support from the city and regional boards of education, and also the Lviv Regional Institute of Post-Diploma Pedagogical Education,” explains Andriy Kurochka, head of the Teach-IT.net program in Ukraine and manager of financial projects at UCU.
The fact that there were more than 90 applicants who submitted questionnaires demonstrates the importance of this summer event. Andriy Kurochka says that Nadia Oksenchuk, head of the Lviv City Board of Education, provided great help in this process: applications and information about the school were distributed through the Board of Education. There were a total of 17 students at the Summer School of modern information technologies, of whom 14 were representatives of various schools of Lviv and the Lviv Region. The rest were staff of the university who eventually according to this method will instruct students of the Social Pedagogy specialization throughout the whole academic year. Courtney Zukoski, manager of education programs for the Microsoft Ukraine corporation, gave a positive evaluation to the activity of such a program in Ukraine. She visited the Ukrainian Catholic University and the IT Summer School on its final day.
Experienced trainers and the future authors of the Ukrainian version of the method conducted the lessons: Prof. Dr. Natalia Morze, prorector of the Agrarian Academy and an expert in the educational programs of the Microsoft and Intel corporations, and Ms. Nina Dementiievska, director of the civic educational organization AYORN and expert in the educational programs of the Microsoft and Intel corporations. They themselves have worked on developing a number of methods and so their high evaluation of Teach-IT.net and readiness to become the authors of its Ukrainian version is a strong positive signal for the future spread of the program in Ukraine. The instruction went on in a very practical way. In front of computers, the teachers acquired necessary knowledge to work with scanners, printers, digital photo devices, and so on.
Future plans include more test training sessions in Lviv and other cities of Ukraine and also the publication of textbooks and methodological reference books and the preparation of trainers to spread this method in Ukraine. “UCU does not see itself as a training center. Rather we are managers and co-authors of the Ukrainian version of the Teach-IT.net method. And so we invite various educational centers which would like to help the Ukrainian teacher through our method to master the knowledge of information technologies, so necessary in our modern world, to work together with us,” says Andriy Kurochka.
Contact
Ukrainian Catholic University
vul. Ilariona Sventsitskoho, 17
Lviv, 79011, UKRAINE
