Today, our partner in education BrainBasket Foundation is launching the second stage of the nationwide social and educational program Technology Nation, consisting of several components, the central focus of which is WOW Teachers project, aiming to provide a modern basic web development course to 400 computer science school teachers.
Today, our partner in education BrainBasket Foundation is launching the second stage of the nationwide social and educational program Technology Nation, consisting of several components, the central focus of which is WOW Teachers project, aiming to provide a modern basic web development course to 400 computer science school teachers.
Throughout the years the International Renaissance Foundation contributed to qualitative changes in education, supported the diversity of educational institutions, innovative forms and methods of teaching, and modern management in education. The purpose of Technology Nation program is to help all those willing to learn the basic programming, to develop technology skills and demonstrate opportunities for further self-education. That is why the Foundation provided support to BrainBasket to continue Technology Nation social and educational program in 2018-2019.
It is expected that at least half of teachers that will participate in the training program, during the next year will conduct extra-curriculum web development courses for more than 4000 teenagers, using the facilities of BrainBasket training hubs created in 2016-2017 in 36 cities of Ukraine with the support of well-known IT companies Ciklum, Luxoft, GlobalLogic, Navigator and others, as well as based on partner schools across the country. Teachers will receive a small remuneration for conducting extra-curriculum courses.
In the future teachers will be able to include the elements of the course in their computer science lessons or to independently conduct training courses for teenagers in a format of extra-curriculum activities, that will additionally augment the scale of the project. The program will allow teens to learn to create websites on their own, which will contribute to promoting the study of technology among high school students.
The course program was developed by a group of enthusiasts, experienced mentors of BrainBasket, using the materials from well-known world-class educational institutions and online resources (in particular, University of London, W3Schools, Microsoft, Mozilla MDN and others.). In spring of 2018 the program has been successfully tested on pilot teams of teachers in Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Sumy, as well as a pilot group of high school students in Zaporizhzhya.
In the course of the project implementation it is planned to create an accompanying educational video course that can be used as an online tutorial for learning web development in a mixed format by any non-profit educational initiative and teachers.
Also, within the framework of the second stage of the Technology Nation, another course will be developed for a wider audience of school teachers, covering such topics as cybersecurity, media literacy and media hygiene, as well as online tools for organization of educational process. When creating this course, it is planned to involve all players who already have some experience in this field.
In addition to training teachers in 2018-2019, the Foundation will also continue to educate adults in basic programming, based on Harvard and MIT curriculum, project IT Moms (training for moms on maternity leave) as well as education for children within the framework of the program Technology Nation Kids. In 2016-2017, more than 5000 adults and children were trained in these programs.
