ITU Regional Office for CIS in cooperation with the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunication (IET) organized professional trainings for school informatics teachers from rural settlements of Kyrgyz Republic, which were conducted from 11 March to 5 May 2019.
The trainings included seven training courses for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd levels, covering relevantly three main topics: Information and Internet technologies (courses completed by 34 participants); Web-technologies and Programming (course completed by 14 participants); and Algorithms and Programming (courses completed by 72 participants). Therefore, in total 120 informatics teachers from Osh, Talas, Chui, Issyk Kul, Zhalal-Abad regions of Kyrgyz Republic completed the ITU professional trainings this year, including 31 men and 89 women.
The participants passed an evaluation test before the trainings, and all of them successfully passed an exam upon completion of the courses, while more than 80% of participants showed good results.
A trainee feedback survey, which is traditionally conducted by the IET after each training course, showed the training participants' satisfaction with the learning materials presented and the professional level of trainers. In particular, the training participants noted that the trainings teach them, among others, to love their work and be sure of the future of the profession they selected. Among desirable topics to be covered by next-year trainings, the participants noted Internet programming technology, in particular PHP, MySQL, Jscript, Apache, and databases.
The participants expressed their gratitude to the training organizers, the International Telecommunication Union and the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications, and their willingness to participate in the trainings of next levels.
The IET, based on the experience of their professors involved in the professional trainings, noted the necessity to regularly improve ICT skills of all school teachers, elaborate ICT textbooks in the national language, and encourage school teachers to complete the online cybersecurity training created by the ONAT.
Both, the trainers and the trainees were unanimous in the necessity to continue organizing the trainings.
For the first time, professional trainings for school informatics teachers from rural settlements of Kyrgyz Republic were organized by ITU in cooperation with the IET within the framework of ITU Connect a School Initiative in 2012 at the request of the Government. Considering very positive feedback from the course participants and appreciation by the Government, the trainings were repeated in 2013 and became an almost yearly event.
Since some rural schools are not fully equipped with computers and informatics teachers in rural schools often have no opportunity to improve and upgrade their professional skills and knowledge, this ITU project is really of demand as significantly contributing to digital inclusion of children through upgrading professional level of those who teach them ICT. On the other hand, due to predomination of women among the trainees and, in general, among school teachers, the gender component of the project is also significant.
It is also worth noting, that the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications, the ITU Academia Member and ITU long-term partner in organization of the professional trainings for rural informatics teachers, is also actively involved in the ITU CoE project. For the 2019-2022 CoE project period, the IET provides trainings under the CoE Digital Inclusion programme for persons with disabilities (on the basis of the Iygilik specialized training centre for persons with disabilitiesk created with the help of ITU) and for school children from rural areas.
