School informatization: directions for change

Print Alexander Uvarov

Reforms of the national school have been going on for decades. But few will argue with the authors of the recently published report of the Public Chamber, who claim: “...There is a disproportionately larger amount of work ahead. Almost all components of our educational system need a qualitative restructuring” [1] . One of the main directions of this work is the informatization of education.

The task of pedagogical development of new information and communication technologies (ICT) was first formulated in the documents of the national school reform more than twenty years ago [2] . However, even today, many politicians, managers and practical school workers in Russia consider the informatization of education as a technological operation that is not directly related to changes in the essence of the educational process. Equipping schools with ICT tools occurs in isolation from discussing and solving problems of content, methods and organizational forms of educational work. There is no clear understanding in the public consciousness that current shifts in both society and education are due to the phenomenon of the emergence of a global information economy.

The real goal of informatization of domestic education is to change the content, methods and organizational forms of educational work in the context of the formation of a school, which is designed to solve the problem of preparing young people for life in the information society. Let us note that life not only places new demands on the school, but also provides it with tools for solving new problems. Chief among them are new pedagogical technologies and ICT tools that support them.

We will analyze the factors that determine the dynamics of changes occurring in the school, touch on the new content and expected results of educational work, touch on the methods and organizational forms of educational work necessary to achieve them, and also discuss specific actions that follow from a clear understanding of the changes taking place in the system today education.

Changes are inevitable and radical

Let us remember that economists from the US Department of Commerce were the first to talk about the “information society”. Statistical reports on the activities of American enterprises in the late 50s of the last century showed that the number of white-collar employees exceeded the number of blue-collar workers for the first time in history. Following this, economist Fritz Machlup drew attention to the growth of the “knowledge industry”, Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell published a book about the advent of the era of “post-industrial society”, and the US Department of Commerce prepared a nine-volume report “The Information Economy” [3] . Following the widely circulated work of Alvin Toffler and John Naisbitt, the notion of the inevitability of accelerating and predictable global change has captured public attention. Shoshana Zuboff's research has confirmed that changes in industry and society in the early stages of building an industrial economy in England in the late 17th and early 18th centuries are largely similar to changes in manufacturing in the United States in the last third of the 20th century. [4] . Around the same time, people started talking about the processes of informatization of society in our country [5] .

At the heart of current discussions about the need to change schools in response to changes in the field of production and people's daily lives lies one fundamental idea: the information society is replacing the industrial society, just as the industrial society replaced the agricultural one [6] , and this is a global process.

The transformation of our society into an information society is connected not only and not so much with the spread of new information technologies [7] . The changes are much more significant. They concern the very ways we live and work, and the growing understanding of interdependence in the world around us. The most insightful philosophers have long realized this. Thus, according to V. S. Bibler, the modern scientific and technological revolution means that the main form of human activity (even in the sphere of direct production) should proceed as self-directed activity, free time activity, concentrated in small dynamic groups. The task of man turns out to be a radical cultural change in the very original forms of activity and thinking. Individuals here (even in the sphere of material production) communicate not as “particles-cogs” of a single “aggregate” worker, but as separate lonely people, closed to their own way of thinking, in the context of universal individual activity and information [8] .

Informatization is not limited to increasing the volume of information circulating in the world, automating its collection, processing, transmission, storage, preparation, presentation and use. It gives rise to a new quality of social production. Until the early 70s, the ratio of the market value of companies to their book value abroad was always less than one (~ 0.8). But over the next thirty years this attitude changed radically. At the beginning of the 21st century, the average value of the market/book value ratio for companies used to calculate the Dow Jones Industrial Average was already more than five [9] . Thus, tangible assets accounted for only 20% of the total value of modern high-tech enterprises, and 80% were intangible assets, roughly speaking, knowledge. It is not surprising that the current type of economy began to be called the “knowledge-based economy.”

The formation of industrial society led to the emergence of the mass school familiar to us all. The formation of the information society, which is taking place before our eyes, also cannot leave aside one of the main social institutions for the reproduction of modern man - the secondary school.

Education workers in our country have long been hearing about Toffler’s “third wave” [10] . However, most of us still believe that the informatization of education is just another political campaign, another link in an endless chain of reforms, of which the mass school has experienced many over the two centuries of its existence. We are accustomed to believing that traditional education is a “basic value” and that school is the most stable social institution. Therefore, it is worth recalling that the modern school as a specific social institution appeared as a result of social changes brought to life (using Toffler’s metaphor) by the “second wave.” It is a product of industrial society. It is naive to believe that the “third wave” of global changes that we are experiencing today will not cause the same radical changes in the field of training the younger generation as the two previous waves left behind. Moreover, the changes are not only quantitative, but also qualitative. This is not just about the fact that digital educational resources will complement or supplant the traditional textbook. The traditional textbook, which forms the basis of the modern mass school, promises to disappear just as it once appeared. Moreover, the school itself may fundamentally change.

Education leaders in Western countries are well aware of this development of events. In particular, one of the reports prepared by the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation is devoted to an analysis of the prospects for the development of the general education system [11] . In it, along with two “natural” scenarios for the development of a comprehensive school (transforming it into a learning organization and the growth on its basis of centers for the cultural and social development of local communities), the scenario of “erosion” of the school (the takeover of educational functions by network educational structures) is seriously considered.

Note that in domestic pedagogy there are no serious studies of alternative scenarios for the development of secondary schools [12] . Large-scale actions that involve significant investments in education are today carried out without analysis of possible prospects and long-term consequences. Their initiators often view the computerization of schools as a one-time political fireworks show: they distributed computers to children, connected schools to the Internet, reported back - the problem was solved. Questions about how much and how these investments will increase the effectiveness of students’ academic work, how the work of the school can or should change, are not discussed anywhere.

Insufficient awareness of the importance of the problems of informatization of domestic education and the scale of the upcoming changes is also characteristic of serious statesmen who formulate policy in the field of education. In the already mentioned report of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, issues of school informatization are touched upon only in connection with its equipping with ICT tools, and the number of students per computer is cited as the only indicator of this complex process. Nevertheless, there is a need to understand the changes taking place today. Let us mention only two areas that are directly related to our topic.

Changes in the labor market

An important feature of the modern economy is the rapid updating of technology and fierce competition. More and more workers must constantly update their knowledge base (lifelong learning). They must survive in the “mill of competition.” Up to 30% of jobs change annually (appear/update/disappear), and workers applying for them are forced to learn new things.

Virtual forms of labor organization, part-time employment and “self-employment” are becoming more and more widespread. People who are able to quickly learn new things, work with partners in frequently changing teams, and solve non-standard problems are sought after for permanent, highly paid jobs. Today, up to 20% of working time is allocated to personnel development, and the funds spent on this are considered as investments in human capital, on which the success of production as a whole depends.

Workers engaged in the production, transfer and use of knowledge are becoming the dominant group of workers.

Changes that happen to schoolchildren

Over the past decade, schoolchildren have changed significantly. They grow up in a world of unlimited access to information. New to most teachers, digital games, smartphones, MP3 players, the Internet, laptop computers are a common part of the world for schoolchildren. Mastering and using more and more new technical devices that combine various means of working with digital information (gadgets) is becoming commonplace for most of them.

More and more schoolchildren are becoming interested in digital photos and videos. Distributing your own materials via the Internet has become a routine for many. When they come to school, they look skeptically at teachers who are poorly familiar with new information technologies. Schoolchildren are the first to master and use social Internet services that form Web 2.0. The gap between today's children and those who grew up in the pre-computer era will only grow.

Today it is absolutely clear that changes in the content, methods and organizational forms of educational work, which we associate with the informatization of education, are not the whim of individual teachers, but a forced response of the school to the globalization of the economy, increasing demands on the individual and the complication of life caused by the emergence of the information society. The need for these changes is clear, undeniable and urgent. Let's try to figure out what their essence is.

Education Content Update

The question of what and how to teach the younger generation is one of the eternal questions of didactics. Innovative teachers at all times tried to develop and implement into practice requirements for the content of education that would reflect their contemporary ideas about the work of the “new school”. Historians of education are well aware that these requirements have changed more than once over the past centuries. Religious education, with which the history of the school began, was aimed at bringing the student to an ideal image. It relied on canonical texts and used indoctrination as its main pedagogical tool. The school of the Enlightenment ceased to require students to master religious dogma, but largely continued the methodological tradition based on simple indoctrination. It is worth emphasizing that even today the methods of educational work largely rely on centuries-old technologies and pedagogical cliches. And first of all, to the practice of indoctrination, which has long caused an ironic reaction from students [13] .

Traditionally, the content of education is associated almost exclusively with the texts of textbooks that schoolchildren master (“knowledge aspect”), but it is far from exhausted by this. The most important elements of the content of education are fixed by methods and organizational forms of educational work, which ensure the formation of appropriate methods of action and critical thinking (“activity aspect”). The volume of knowledge is growing rapidly, and it has long been impossible to include all of it in school courses. Therefore, the importance of the activity aspect increases. In recent decades, teachers have also been paying more and more attention to developing students’ ability to apply what they have learned in a real, and not just educational, environment to solve practical problems (formation of competencies). All this leads to a change in ideas about the requirements for educational results.

These requirements are clearly formulated in the documents of the “Movement for Achieving Educational Outcomes of the 21st Century” [14] . It can be considered generally accepted that in order for mass school students to achieve modern educational results, the following are necessary:

• high level of mastery of basic academic disciplines;

• developing learning skills and using ICT tools to work with information;

• conducting educational work in an environment that reflects modern realities;

• emphasis on new core content components;

• application of assessment methods that are adequate to the new goals and expected results of educational work.

Let us comment on these requirements.

High level of mastery of basic academic disciplines

This requirement applies, first of all, to traditional academic subjects: language (native and foreign), mathematics, natural sciences, and humanities. In the past decade, the developers of educational standards for domestic schools worked hard to create “educational minimums.” They sought to set a threshold below which the effectiveness of the educational system should not fall. In order to “eliminate student overload,” content was sometimes removed from training courses, without mastery of which it is difficult to talk about a high level of mastery of basic academic disciplines. The task of the developers was to reduce the volume of material studied in basic disciplines, to adjust educational standards (minimums) to the limited opportunities for educational work that the Russian mass school of the end of the last century provided. The essence of the content of education fixed by the standards did not change. There was no focus on the integration of traditional academic subjects, no tools for assessing the level of development of relevant skills, information and communication competence, group work skills, etc.

Building educational standards that orient schools toward achieving educational results in the 21st century requires a qualitatively different approach. When determining the content of basic academic disciplines at school, one should focus on such a set of basic knowledge, skills and competencies that will allow:

• to form among schoolchildren a modern natural-scientific picture of the world,

• give them a full-fledged humanitarian education,

• help them develop a civic position and see ways to solve current social problems.

To do this, it is necessary to fix as standards not “educational minimums”, which are within the capabilities of the current school, but “educational maximums”, the achievement of which will mean truly modern and high-quality training of schoolchildren in basic academic disciplines. And it is not so important if today, when assessing the work of a particular school, the educational results achieved by students turn out to be significantly lower than the required standards. The introduction of “educational maximums” into practice should attract the attention of teachers, parents and the public to the inadequacy of existing results and encourage schools to improve their work. “Educational Maximums” is the main tool for a consistent and controlled increase in the results of schoolchildren’s academic work and the effectiveness of the general education system as a whole. I would like to hope that it is in this direction that the developers of the new generation of educational standards will move, setting a high level of mastery of basic academic disciplines.

Formation of educational skills and use of ICT tools to work with information

The successful development of these skills is closely related to the information and communication competence of schoolchildren. In the project “Informatization of the Education System (ISO)”, which, on the instructions of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, has been carried out by the National Personnel Training Foundation (NFTP) since 2005 [15] . , information and communication competence of schoolchildren (ICT competence) is defined as “the ability of students to use information and communication technologies to access information, to search, organize, process, evaluate, as well as to produce and transmit/distribute it, which is sufficient to to live and work successfully in the emerging information society.”

The relationship between the learning skills being developed, ICT tools for working with information and ICT competence of schoolchildren is presented in the following table [16] . .

Let us note that the mastery and use by students of the tools listed in the table has a direct impact on the content of the educational skills being developed, on the volume and nature of the tasks that schoolchildren can independently solve. Under these conditions, the formation of ICT competence becomes not only desirable, but also an absolutely necessary result of educational work, which should be explicitly recorded in educational standards (along with educational skills).

Conducting educational work in an environment that reflects modern realities

The requirement to “teach and learn in a 21st century environment” means that curricula, methods and organization of work at school must ensure:

• connection of the studied material with the everyday life of students;

• studying not only educational, but also real problems;

• the opportunity for students to go out into the real world for classes (conducting classes outside the classroom);

• the opportunity for students to actively interact with each other, with teachers and other significant adults during their educational work.

Domestic teachers have always strived to connect learning with life. However, now our lives are rapidly changing, a new human habitat is being formed. The spread of the Internet, mobile communications, digital sensors and computer laboratory equipment (for laboratory work and practical research), digital photography and video qualitatively expands the possibilities for conducting field observations, collecting materials for educational projects, and attracting outside professionals to educational work at school. etc. Organizational forms and methods of educational work, which were previously available only to students of elite schools, are becoming available to every student.

Let us repeat that conducting educational work in an environment that reflects modern realities allows students to actually develop the necessary competencies, which today have become one of the mandatory results of educational work.

Emphasis on new basic components of educational content

Today, these components include, first of all, understanding of global problems, economic (entrepreneurial) literacy, civic literacy (introduction to modern social problems).

Understanding global issues. The recently popular slogan “We cannot wait for favors from nature...” is a thing of the past. Humanity has realized the need to live in harmony with nature. Today it faces ever new threats: climate change, environmental disasters, previously unknown diseases... A current school graduate should be able to meaningfully discuss global issues, using the educational skills developed at school and modern tools for working with information. He must gain experience in cooperation (including educational cooperation) with representatives of other peoples and cultures, learn to conduct an open dialogue with them and develop collective solutions on problems that are significant to all. To do this, in particular, you need to be fluent in foreign languages. The ability of representatives of the younger generation to understand global threats and seek ways to eliminate them is becoming one of the conditions for the survival of humanity.

Economic (entrepreneurial) literacy. And the information society gives rise to quite complex models of economic behavior. A school graduate cannot do without making economic decisions concerning his personal life. The school should help him understand the role and importance of entrepreneurial activity in the modern economy, and form an understanding of the work of economic institutions. Without this, today it is very difficult to find your place in the national economy and business environment.

Civic Literacy (Introduction to Contemporary Social Issues). The traditional approach to the formation of civic literacy has been largely focused on indoctrination, which leads to passive citizenship. As a result, a current school graduate cannot always be called an informed citizen, ready to actively participate in the management of society [17] . But today it is becoming increasingly important to teach students to comprehend the local and global meaning of the political decisions being discussed and to consciously make their civic choice. A graduate who is unable to successfully defend his civil rights and consciously fulfill his civic responsibilities is unlikely to deserve a matriculation certificate. We emphasize that the formation of educational skills and the use of modern tools in working with information, as well as conducting educational work in an environment that reflects modern realities, make new basic content components accessible to every student.

Application of assessment methods that are adequate to new goals and expected results of educational work

Assessing learning outcomes is the inverse task of determining the content of education. In a traditional (in a bad sense) school, content refers to the volume of knowledge to be acquired.

The main achievement of modern pedagogical philosophy and, in particular, “development pedagogy” is the realization that the “activity aspect” of the content of education (i.e., the ability to solve problems, and not only educational ones, to navigate and act in real life conditions) is no less , and even more significant than the “knowledge” aspect (the assimilation of a certain “amount of knowledge”). The use of ICT creates conditions for the development of educational subjects of a new generation, which are focused on achieving modern educational results by students and sufficiently fully represent both the “knowledge” and “activity” aspects of the content of education. The main reason hindering their development and dissemination is the use of assessment methods that are inadequate to the new requirements for educational results.

Having advocated for a certain independence of schools in the early 90s and faced with an insufficiently responsible attitude of some teachers, education authorities “take control of the situation.” Testing is being introduced at schools under the banner of a “unified assessment of learning outcomes” [18] .

At the same time, USE apologists refer to “positive foreign experience” (in particular, the USA). Unfortunately, the “innovators” of school management do not pay attention to the extensive criticism of the testing system in foreign pedagogical research [19] . Nowadays, alternative assessment methods have already been created (including in the USA) and are being put into practice. They are focused on the use of adequate measures for the entire variety of educational results and largely coincide with the domestic tradition and intentions of “development pedagogy.” The experience of developing new generation educational courses [20] shows how the consistent use of the project-based work style of schoolchildren makes it possible to evaluate the results of their learning based on presentations at student conferences (in the classroom, school, district), collections of the work they have completed (portfolio of achievements), and the exhibition of these works in the Internet.

Today our school is at a crossroads: to limit teaching practice to outdated (borrowed from the obsolete experience of a foreign school) formal assessment methods that cannot record modern educational results, or to use existing traditions, experience, results of psychological and pedagogical research (both domestic and and foreign) for the transition to assessment methods that are natural for schools of the information age, because they are capable of recording modern educational results.

Note that in both cases, ICT tools are used to mechanize the assessment processes. But in the first case, this is the transformation of a computer into an electronic examiner, reducing it to the level of a “testing machine,” and in the second, it is the use of information technology to store and present (socialize) the results of schoolchildren’s educational work. Traditional assessment methods are either not objective enough (oral questioning) or are focused only on a formal assessment of knowledge acquisition (testing). The use of ICT tools allows one to go beyond traditional tests, which boil down to choosing an answer to questions from a given list.

Currently, special tools have been developed that make it possible to evaluate problem-solving procedures, analyze and analyze texts prepared by schoolchildren. In foreign schools, teachers are increasingly using alternative assessment methods [21] , including portfolios of student work [22] . The transition to methods for assessing the results of educational work that are adequate to the new educational results will contribute to the controlled development of a modern school.

Creative independence

Our school faces a difficult task: to prepare new citizens for life in an information society, the structure of which we do not fully imagine, to prepare them for productive activities in a knowledge-based economy, the details of which are sometimes difficult for us to imagine. If earlier the developers of the content of general education, the best teachers and leading researchers clearly saw new horizons of our life and sought to include in school subjects the knowledge that is necessary for this life, now the situation has changed. Now no one can say with complete certainty what kind of knowledge a school graduate will need in ten years. The only way out is to provide school graduates with the ability to learn new things themselves. The key element of current education is the formation in each graduate of the ability to learn, think and act independently, make their own choices and take responsibility for them, solve non-traditional problems using the experience gained. He must also have developed communication skills and the ability to work successfully in a team. Previously, the development of these abilities and skills was the prerogative of only elite schools.

The creators of innovative educational and methodological complexes of the new generation, which are supported by the ISO project, are more or less successfully trying to achieve the listed educational results in their developments. Dissemination and use of these materials can help students develop the full range of necessary competencies, including:

• educational, which represents the ability to organize the learning process and choose one’s own development trajectory; solve educational and self-educational problems; connect together and use individual components of knowledge; derive practical benefit from educational experience;

• research, which reflects the ability to find and process information; use different data sources; work with documents;

• social and personal, which make it possible to critically evaluate the information offered; find and interpret connections between them and real life; realize the importance of social, political, economic, cultural, environmental, technological and other aspects of the education received; develop your own opinion and enter into discussion;

• communicative, which allow you to take into account other views and analyze their foundations; read and interpret graphs, charts, and data tables; speak publicly using visual aids (multimedia presentations); organize and participate in discussions; establish and maintain contacts, collaborate and work as a team.

The introduction of such courses into school practice and a focus on achieving new educational results entails the need to equip schools with ICT tools, intensive use of the Internet, and the widespread introduction of all new information technologies into school practice.

Information and communication technologies as a tool for change

Hopes for a qualitative improvement in the work of schools have long been associated with the advent of computers and other ICT tools. More than forty years ago, one of the pioneers of computer education, P. Suppes, promised: “...Not many years will pass, and each of the millions of schoolchildren will receive the same responsive and encyclopedic knowledge of a mentor as Aristotle - an enviable privilege that Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon, once possessed it" [23] .

Today's schoolchildren have access to computers that Professor P. Suppes could not even dream of. However, even today we do not often see convincing examples of how new information technologies help change the practice of educational work and solve difficult problems that teachers face every day.

According to the author, the main problem is that modern educational policy and the practice of making management decisions focus on the introduction of ICT into the educational process, which leads away from the essence of the matter. We should talk not so much about the introduction of ICTs, but about solving with their help the pressing problems of a modern school and, first of all, achieving educational results in the 21st century. From this point of view, let us consider which of the ICT tools supplied to schools turned out to be the most in demand and may affect its work in the near future.

New Teacher Tools

Today, twenty years after the first personal computers appeared in schools, it can be argued that ICTs are used here primarily as a means of visualization. The motto is “Teach clearly!” known since the time of Jan Komenski. In the pre-computer school, in addition to the blackboard, posters and maps, the teacher used filmstrips, film and slide projectors, overhead projectors, epiprojectors, and various audio equipment. The teacher's new tool, the electronic (multimedia) projector, has replaced them all. Presentation graphics and electronic projectors have changed the way we think about classroom equipment. Independent preparation of presentations using standard office tools becomes the responsibility of the teacher [24] .

Another tool that has proven its pedagogical effectiveness is a digital (interactive) blackboard [25] . The traditional blackboard, which has been used in schools for two centuries, is one of the main working tools of any teacher. This is a common information space for him and for schoolchildren. When preparing for a lesson, the teacher always makes notes in a special notebook and plans what he will bring to the board. Analyzing the lesson that was subsequently taught, he makes clarifications, changes, and additions to the outline. And the slides, posters, films, audio recordings used in the lesson are considered by him as separate material.

Replacing a traditional chalkboard with a digital one improves a teacher's productivity, just as replacing a typewriter with a word processor increased the productivity of an office worker. Now the teacher prepares lesson notes on a computer, stores them in digital form, and includes the necessary visual material (presentations, photos, drawings, audio and video fragments, links to Internet resources, etc.). Editing lesson development is no longer difficult.

Third-generation digital whiteboard software allows anyone, even a not very ICT-literate teacher, to easily use a computer for their daily work in the classroom. We can say that for the teacher, the digital board - the last link in the chain of other new tools (school computer network, Internet, sets of digital educational materials, personal computer) - closes the cycle of paperless technologies for the preparation and use of educational and methodological materials at school. A digital board with a computer connected to the school network connects the classroom and normal classroom work with the global information space. Preparing for a lesson and selecting presentation materials are no longer a private matter for each teacher. Web pages have already appeared where teachers exchange their work with colleagues from different schools and even countries.

To prepare for a lesson, the teacher needs access to appropriate resources (educational texts, illustrations, audio and video fragments, digital models, etc.). Not all of them are easy to find on the Internet, so school-wide regional and federal collections of digital educational resources (DER) - a new tool for teachers - are becoming increasingly in demand. The unified collection of digital educational resources, which is currently being created within the framework of the ISO project [26] , is gradually gaining popularity among teachers.

Another new teacher tool is automated monitoring and ongoing assessment of progress. Teachers are increasingly using automated control, as it is simple, reliable and frees them from manually checking the results of students’ work. A lot of ready-made tasks and questions are already available via the Internet (including in a single collection of TsOR).

Modern mobile devices (laptops, smartphones, etc.) make it possible to introduce highly effective pedagogical technologies for teamwork, which otherwise would have difficulty finding their way into the classroom. One of the new teacher tools promises to be the EduNova system for supporting group work for schoolchildren, developed in Chile a couple of years ago [27 .

It is well known how difficult it is to organize group work of schoolchildren so that the work of each of them is effective. When working in groups, all students are required to follow a whole set of instructions, which they often get confused about [28 . The EduNova system helps to overcome emerging difficulties.

As usual, the class is divided into five or six small groups. During group work, each student uses an individual laptop computer. Computers are networked and controlled by a single program to support teamwork. Group members work together at the same table. As this work progresses, each of them receives individual step-by-step instructions on their computer screen, helping to organize the work of the group as a whole. In addition, schoolchildren can prepare and send messages to each other over a computer network that are necessary during their work, carry out calculations, etc. The teacher monitors the work of each of them on his computer. If necessary, he can approach each group and help them with their work. Thus, a laptop computer helps organize the joint work of schoolchildren with different levels of initial training, giving them the opportunity to put forward and discuss different points of view. The EduNova system allows you to jointly solve two important tasks: increasing the level of mastery of basic disciplines and effectively developing communication skills and the ability to work successfully in a group. It can be expected that the spread of systems like EduNova will dramatically increase the effectiveness of group work among schoolchildren in the classroom.

New educational tools

The use of new tools makes it possible to solve traditional learning problems in a new way and supports new (project) forms of such work.

A typical example is “digital dictations”. With their help, today some Moscow schools successfully teach schoolchildren to read and write. Here, a new tool for educational work is a complex that includes a computer with a word processor and a voice recorder. Children are invited to record on a voice recorder the stories of their parents and grandparents about certain events of the past (about their family, the Great Patriotic War, etc.). Next, the child must enter the dictated text into the computer and edit it. The text checked by the teacher becomes an integral part of a collection of stories prepared by the whole class. Digital dictations increase the intensity and effectiveness of educational work and help solve the problem of motivation.

A noticeable breakthrough in the teaching of natural sciences was the appearance at school of such new educational tools as digital sensors and other equipment for automating laboratory experiments. Several decades ago, the labor intensity of experimental work by scientists was noticeably reduced through the use of these devices. They are now becoming standard equipment in school laboratories. Digital microscopes, motion sensors, temperature, light, current, etc. allow students not only to perform regular laboratory work at school, but also to conduct real research, and automatic results processing tools help accumulate and analyze the collected data, present them graphically, and prepare professionally designed reports on the results of work performed.

New educational tools are facilitating the spread of highly effective teaching techniques that previously required individual work with students because they took too much time to be used in a regular classroom. Today we know that all children are talented and teachable. But different children need to present the same information differently depending on the type of “intelligence” of each of them [29] . The use of digital tools for individual work with audio and video materials helps to cope with this task.

For example, listening to text on an MP3 player provides an opportunity to become familiar with literary works for those children who perceive text well by ear, but have difficulty working with printed text. Unfortunately, audiobooks remain an underdeveloped pedagogical tool. Another example is the preparation of audio and video recordings of literary works by schoolchildren themselves. But this pedagogical technique is not yet used often.

There is little doubt that in 10-15 years, all students will go to class with laptop computers. Today, many schools in developed countries have begun to master this technology. Using a computer simultaneously as a workbook, as a textbook on any subject, and as a tool for communication with teachers and classmates fundamentally changes the organization of educational work and dramatically increases its manageability and effectiveness. Free access to online educational materials both at school and at home allows you to take a new approach to homework and make it an organic part of your academic work. Pedagogical innovations, which previously were the prerogative of only the most talented teachers from the best schools, are becoming available to every teacher. However, colossal work in terms of complexity and scale awaits us if we want to bring all this to life.

Direction of change

In recent years, several large-scale projects have been implemented in Russia, the goal of which is to equip schools with IKT tools and develop new digital educational resources. Billions of rubles have been spent from the federal budget for these purposes. As a result, all schools are now equipped with ICT facilities and connected to the Internet. Teachers have mastered computer literacy. Digital educational resources are being developed and implemented. A pilot program to provide first-graders with individual laptop computers has begun.

However, all this has not yet led to a change in the quality of schoolchildren’s preparation or to their achievement of new educational results. Despite the investments made, the school's operation has not changed substantially. For a school to start working in a new way, it is not enough to bring computers there and train teachers to be computer literate. At the same time, we need to help her change the content and organization of her educational work.

The project “Informatization of the education system (ISO)”, which has been implemented over the past three years, has created conditions for the widespread introduction of innovative educational materials aimed at obtaining new educational results in an ICT-rich educational environment. The existing reserve allows:

• use innovative educational and methodological materials, the first stage of testing of which will be completed in the current academic year;

• develop, based on the experience of leading schools, regulations and a regulatory framework for the implementation of already prepared innovative educational materials and technologies;

• to develop work that would ensure the transition of the country's leading schools (primarily the winners of the competition within the framework of the National Project "Education") to the sustainable use of innovative educational materials and the formation of new educational results for schoolchildren on this basis.

The systematic introduction of digital educational resources and information and communication technologies, on which new educational and methodological materials are based, implies profound changes in the structure and work of the school, in the goals and content of education. Therefore, it is impossible to carry it out by the school itself. All over the world, the introduction of new things is considered as an independent business process that requires special planning, financing and implementers (system integrators). It is unrealistic to expect that changes can be made in the Education industry without going through such a process. This requires a special federal project, which is based on the results of the Priority National Project “Education”.

Our schools have a lot in common. This allows us to develop standard solutions and successfully use them within the framework of a federal project. For each of the schools participating in the project, the goal, expected results and timing of the work, the amount of resources required and its external support are recorded. It is natural to use an application-based, competitive procedure for participation in the project. Each of the participating regions receives a quota (the number of participating schools), which is determined by the ratio of federal and regional funding. The main criteria for competitive selection: school readiness (motivation, experience, qualifications), availability of infrastructure. The competition application contains the school's self-assessment, compared with an external expert assessment. The decision to participate in the project for each specific school is made by the competition committee. The school that wins the competition is allocated additional resources for:

• development of its infrastructure and information environment,

• training of the school team of project participants,

• payment for methodological support for teachers,

• additional payment to teachers for work on the introduction of innovative educational and methodological complexes,

• purchase of educational and consumable materials.

Such a school receives a case study of a project participant, containing all the documentation and methods necessary for organizing implementation.

In each school participating in the project, the situation is first analyzed (for this purpose it is examined together with specialists from the project support system), and then a development program for the next three years is drawn up for it. Monitoring the progress of the project consists of two components: common for all project participants and special, taking into account the characteristics of a particular school.

The federal project ends with an external survey of each school participating in the project and a public presentation of its results to the public and the teaching community.

The total duration of implementation of innovative educational and methodological materials (IUMM) within the project is three years.

The first stage includes:

• selection of IUMM for implementation (from among those that have passed the experimental test) and preparation for each of them of a package of materials that support the implementation process;

• creation of a package of materials to assess the degree of readiness of the school for implementation;

• creation of a package of documents regulating the work of the implementation support service;

• creation of a methodology for monitoring and evaluating implementation results, including the development of implementation efficiency indicators;

• creation of a system for presenting implementation results to the teaching community;

• selection of schools and formation of a team of implementation participants (coordinators, methodologists);

• training of team members of implementation participants;

• deployment and preparation of the necessary infrastructure;

• pedagogical design (adjustment of the educational program and, in particular, the curriculum, training programs, methods of intermediate certification);

• concluding an agreement with the implementation support center and planning work on organizing monitoring;

• informing parents, students, teaching staff about the project).

The second stage includes:

• conducting preparatory seminars with teachers (members of school teams) who will teach schoolchildren using IUMM;

• current methodological support for teachers teaching schoolchildren using IUMM;

• monitoring and evaluation of the progress of development of IUMM in project schools.

The third stage includes:

• conducting methodological seminars with teachers (members of school teams) who will teach schoolchildren using IUMM;

• current methodological support for teachers teaching schoolchildren using IUMM;

• monitoring and evaluation of the progress of development of IUMM in project schools;

• final assessment of the pedagogical effectiveness of the project, measurement of the level of educational results of schoolchildren, preparation of proposals for the further dissemination of IUMM in Russian schools.

The proposed federal project will provide an opportunity to qualitatively change the work of the school, increase its effectiveness through the use of new pedagogical and information technologies, and allow it to take its rightful place in the modern world.

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[1] Education and society: is Russia ready to invest in its future? Report of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, 12/17/2007. P. 59 [ http://www.hse.ru/temp/2007/files/20071220_report.pdf ].

[2] See Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated March 28, 1985 No. 271 “On measures to ensure computer literacy of students in secondary educational institutions and the widespread introduction of electronic computing technology into the educational process” // Issues of Education. 2005. No. 3. P. 341-346.

[3] Machlup F. The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in United States. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1962; Bell D. The Coming Postindustrial Society. N. Y: Basic Books, 1973; The Information Economy. Washington, D. C.: US Department of Commerce, 1977.

[4] Toffler A. The Third Wave. N. Y.: Harper and Row, 1978; Naisbitt J. Megatrends. N. Y.: Warent Books, 1982; Zuboff S. In the Age of Smart Machine. N.Y.: Basic Books, 1988.

[5] Gromov G.V. National information resources: problems of industrial exploitation. M.: Nauka, 1984; The concept of informatization of education //Informatics and education. 1988. No. 6. P. 3-29.

[6] There is reason to believe that one of the reasons that accelerated the collapse of the Soviet system was the failure of an attempt to transfer the country to the “knowledge economy” by implementing a program to accelerate social and economic development, which was proclaimed by the country’s leadership twenty years ago. As part of this program, from September 1985, all high school students began to study computer science, the production of microcomputers began and equipping schools with computer science classrooms.

[7] Although their development and, as a consequence, changes in the information environment of modern man are one of the obvious signs of the changes taking place.

[8] School of dialogue of cultures: Fundamentals of the program / V. S. Bibler (ed.). Kemerovo: Aleph, 1992.

[9] Chernyshev S. B. A country worth almost nothing // Russian Journal. 11.22.2004 [ http://old.russ.ru/culture/20041122_cher-pr.html ].

[10] A presentation of Alvin Toffler’s ideas for teachers can be found in the article by Anatoly Pinsky {Pinsky A. A. Hoe, Conveyor, Computer // First of September. 12/25/1999).

[11] Schooling for Tomorrow: What Schools for the Future? Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2001.

[12] Perhaps the only exception was the Moscow “School of the Future” program, which began to be implemented on the initiative of Yu. M. Luzhkov in 2007 [ http://www.mk.ru/blogs/MK/2007/09/01/moscow /309794/ ].

[13] Let us remember “Song of a Social Studies Teacher” by Yuli Kim: “I tell them: they say, so and so, they say. / Well, what’s wrong is a lie. / And they shout: “Where are the facts, they say, the facts?” / Take out the arguments and put them down!”

[14] Results That Matter: 21st Century Skills and High School Reform [ www.21stcenturyskills.org/images/stories/otherdocs/Assessment_Landscape.pdfl .

[15] For more information about the ISO project, see the materials on the NFPC website [ www.ntf.ru ].

[16] Among them: instrumental environments for performing technological developments, for preparing audio and video materials and other multimedia products, for mathematical calculations, etc.

[17] Uvarov A. Yu., Hanineton M. Civil education in the information society // Bulletin of the University of the Russian Academy of Education. 2001. Issue. I (11). pp. 19-64.

[18] Assessment technique using a selective response form.

[19] Phi Delta CAPE. 1997. Vol. 79. N I.

[20] Uvarov A. Yu. Informatization of school and the problem of transformation of educational courses 11 Computer science and education. 2004. No. 7. P. 23-28; No. 8. pp. 10-16.

[21] http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/

[22] http://www.pgcps.org/~elc/portfolio.html

[23] Suppes P. Education and computers 11 Information / A. V. Shileiko. M.: Mir, 1968. P. 165.

[24] Presentations are now prepared not only by teachers, but also by schoolchildren (in some schools this is already a mandatory attribute of any public speaking).

[25] A digital (interactive) blackboard is a computer with software, an electronic projector and a blackboard with a digitizer. You can display the necessary information on the board using a projector from a computer. In addition, you can save on your computer all the inscriptions and drawings made on the board during the lesson.

[26] Address of the unified TsOR collection on the Internet: http://school-collection.edu.ru/ .

[27] Nussbaum M. Transforming the Classroom Experience with Face to Face Collaborative Learning [ http://technology4teachers.com/?q=node/4442] .

[28] Uvarov A. Yu. Cooperation in learning: group work. M.: MIROS, 2001.

[29] Gardner G. Structure of the mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. Kyiv: Williams, 2007.

Howard Gardner identifies eight abilities that he calls "intelligences":

I) linguistic intelligence - the ability to skillfully master language, love for words and the desire to explore them; 2) logical-mathematical intelligence - the ability to consider and evaluate objects and concepts in their relationships and interconnections; 3) musical intelligence - the ability not only to compose and perform works in different keys or rhythms, but also to perceive them (this type of intelligence can be associated with other types - linguistic, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic); 4) spatial intelligence - the ability to adequately perceive visual objects, transform them into visual images and modify these images even in the absence of the physical objects themselves; 5) bodily-kinesthetic intelligence - the ability to perfectly control the body and skillfully manipulate objects; 6) intrapersonal intelligence - the ability to skillfully recognize one’s feelings and moods; 7) interpersonal intelligence - the ability to skillfully recognize the feelings and moods of other people and use this information; 8) intelligence of a natural scientist - the ability to recognize and classify natural objects.

Deferred standard of general education Development clusters