11 September 2021
This year, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) continued to provide assistance to the Kyrgyz Republic inthe development of digital skills.
Professional trainings for informatics teachers from rural settlements of the Kyrgyz Republic, organized by the ITU jointly with the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications (IET, Bishkek), were held from early June to early July2021. In total, 144 teachers from the Chui, Issyk Kul, Batken, Naryn, and Talas Regions of the country attended the trainings.
Based on the preliminary evaluation of the teachers skills by questionnaire, the organizers created several groups anddelivered three courses on Algorithmization and Programming Basics and five courses on Basics of Programming Language Python.
At the concluding session, all trainees defended their work. 137 teachers successfully passed the final test and received certificates. 7 teachers were not able to complete the training due to issues related to Internet access.
While evaluating the course, the trainees noted its well-designed structure and practical focus. All the trainees attended the course for the first time.
Now, let us revisit the history of this training.
Professional trainings for informatics teachers from rural settlements of Kyrgyz Republic were first organized in 2012 within the framework of the ITU initiative Connect a School – Connect a Community, and were aimed at developing rural teachers’ basic computer literacy skills. The programme covered all challenges a new computer user may encounter.
Although informatics was taught as a compulsory subject at all schools, due to limited access of rural schools to high speed internet and poor ICT infrastructure – such as a lack of local networks and insufficient quantity of personal computers – there were not enough teachers in the country possessing practical ICT skills.
As a result of positive feedback from trainees, as well as high appreciation of the course by the Government and the Ministry of Education and Science of the Kyrgyz Republic, the training was organized again in 2013 and has sincebecome a yearly exercise.
As more and more informatics teachers had access to computers, the training programme changed.
In 2014, the programme was largely focused on developing teachers’ general pedagogical ICT competence, with the course topics: “Information and Internet Technologies” and “Infocommunication and Web Technologies”. Starting in 2018, the programme was mostly aimed at developing teachers’ subject-focused pedagogical competence, with the course topics: “Algorithmization and Programming Basics”, “Frontend Development Basics”, “Basics of Programming Language Python”. In the latest learning materials developed by the IET trainers, the trainees get acquainted with the programming tools, methodology of delivering remote informatics learning courses using different online-platforms. Thanks to training materials developed by the IET in Kyrgyz language, the training course was better perceived by the trainees.
In 2012-2013, the training courses were delivered in the IET computer classes, equipped with computers connected to the Internet. From 2014, the IET conducted onsite courses in almost all regions of the Kyrgyz Republic. In 2020-2021, due to restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the professional trainings for informatics teachers were delivered online through Zoom, GoogleMeet and Cisco Webex Meetings. The online format allows a wider audience to be reached.
In total, over the period of 2012 to 2021, ITU jointly with IET organized 63 training courses, including 15 courses incomputer classrooms of IET, 33 on-site courses in different regions of the country, and 15 online courses. In total, 938 teaches attended, 78% of whom were women.
Now, the IET is considering organizing ICT training courses for teachers of other school subjects.
Keeping in mind that key objective of the ITU initiative Connect a School – Connect a Community was digital inclusionof rural children who are taught informatics by the above 938 teachers, let us pay attention to the following figures: as of 2021, considering the number of trained informatics teachers and the number of the covered rural schools, 95,000 school children now enjoy more advanced ICT knowledge and skills.
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