Even the teachers themselves learn remotely - Vilnius gathered and trained over 13 students. Lithuanian teachers, which is several times more than the capital itself has. The Vilnius municipality together with the Vilnius Educational Progress Center is sharing its experience - it has organized such a relevant training cycle for teachers about virtual learning environments. Elementary teachers began to learn how to work in Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams environments.
A 5-week distance training cycle for primary school teachers begins today - as many as 200 teachers in the capital will improve. And this is only a part of all the training for educators, which started back in mid-March. Today, the mayor of the capital also joined the primary school teachers in training virtually Remigius Šimašius.
"When new opportunities appear, I wish teachers to take advantage of them, boldly create new lessons and share them, cooperate with colleagues. I invite you to remember, even when working remotely, using all technological innovations, that the educational process is not only teaching, but also the inspiration of students. I am glad that while studying you yourself become a good example for students and create interesting and creative educational conditions for them," said the mayor of the capital.
The municipality's IT team, together with Google, created in a few days what takes many months - a special platform for education, Google G-Suite, which is already used by almost 10 people. Vilnius schoolchildren. Other Lithuanian cities are not forgotten: the Vilnius IT team's product is adapted and used throughout Lithuania. A total of 147 accounts were created for more than 12 thousand schools. users: 155 IT administrators, about 1060 teachers and about 10 students. According to the municipality, about 000 users already use Google Classroom every day.
The 5-week training cycle, which started today, is designed to introduce virtual learning environments and help educators learn how to create their own content in Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams learning environments that are tailored to the learning needs of elementary school students. ) needs. In virtual lectures, teachers will get to know and analyze the technologies used for distance learning, their application, taking into account the abilities and habits of younger school-aged children to use technology. Teachers will learn how to create and manage tools in virtual learning environments involving students.
"Our trainings, lectures and projects are aimed at improving the quality of education and providing targeted support to both teachers and learners. I want to welcome the fact that schools and teachers are slowly discovering what is most acceptable, choosing specific virtual learning environments and starting to focus on how best to manage them. We are also happy that the teachers registered in school teams or groups, so we hope that they will be great consultants in their communities after the training. We will also organize such trainings for subject teachers of basic or secondary education", said Genovaitė Kynė, head of educational activities of the Vilnius Educational Progress Center.
The distance learning cycle will take place in the Moodle environment. Distance learning IT specialist Aistė Čiurlytė Kolesničenko will explain the intricacies of Google Classrooms to around 100 teachers, and Evaldas Stalioraitis, head of Microsoft's academic segment for the Baltic countries, will reveal the possibilities of using Microsoft Teams to another 100 teachers. Qualification improvement certificates will be issued to those who have completed the entire cycle and successfully completed the self-assessment tasks.
The center also continues to look for competent lecturers who create learning platforms, prepare content, and analyze survey data. Surveys have shown that working remotely is not common for many teachers, they have very different IT skills, and questions arise about how to educate children with special needs.
"We heard the concerns of managers and educators, both from kindergartens and schools, that the big challenge is to motivate and include children with special educational needs in the educational process. We organized a series of webinars, which received great interest. The whole of Lithuania joined - teachers, parents, kindergarten teachers and managers from various parts of the country, from 500 to 1000 participants", said G. Kynė.
Currently, the center is implementing other long-term projects - it invites teachers to create and share video lessons, explore various places in Vilnius and prepare lessons and publish them on the interactive map "Experience Vilnius". The center is also implementing a pilot project in 6 schools with the "Teachers Lead Tech" program, which consists of a series of 4 practical lessons for primary school teachers, with the participation of 90 teachers.
Vilnius teachers are also invited to accept the challenge - to participate in the "Ambassadors of Creativity" distance course and exercise their creativity. The center has already received an incredibly large group of participants - it was planned to prepare 20 ambassadors, but three times more will have to be prepared.
More than 13 people have already participated in distance learning organized by the Center for Educational Progress. teachers from all over Lithuania: Birži, Šakii, Klaipėda, Alytus, Lazdijai, Kaišiadori, Vilnius district, Druskininkai, Elektrėnai, Kaunas, Joniškis, Jurbarkas, Kelmės, Mažeikiai, Panevėžys, Raseiniai, Telšiai, Ukmergė, Trakai and other towns. Of them, almost 3 thousand participated in live virtual training, more than 10 thousand viewed training posted online. The majority of Vilnius teachers participate in all trainings, about 60-70 percent.
