Conference publications

Abstracts

XIX conference

Role played by informational technologies in a youth project for the kindergarten

Potapova T.V., Sventsitskaya N.O.

Lomonosov Moscow State University, Belozersky Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology, the Department of Mathematical Methods in Biology, 119992, Russia, Moscow,Vorobyovy Gory, MSU. Phone: +7(495)939-55-06, fax: (495)939-31-81, е-mail: potapova@genebee.msu.ru

The modern educational system is aimed at the achievement of the particular goals: developing the cognitive interest in children, children’s intellectual development through the sensory tasks; development of the cognitive exploratory and the productive (constructive) activity; forming of the basic mathematical notions; forming of the solid worldview, broadening the children’s outlook. Our famous psychologist M.I. Lisina wrote: “…at birth the child doesn’t have any worldview yet; it will be adopted, or, to be more exact, developed gradually during the child’s lifetime. There are two key factors – child’s own activities, when he or she takes part in the cultural process, and the worldview translated by society during the child’s communications with other people. At best the child will adopt the scientific worldview that is appropriate to the social and historical opportunities of the current time period, at the same time enriching it by his or her own contributions”. Present-day specialists note the disastrous slowdown of the speech development and role-playing game activities among the preschool children, connecting these facts to the early immersion of children into the artificial world adapted to their age, where they grow and develop on their own without communication with the adults. Experience suggests that the most effective solution to this problem could lie in introducing children to the world of modern informational technologies with the help of the school and university students. In 2005-2007 small youth groups carried out a range of volunteer projects in Moscow kindergartens on the fellowship granted by the international “Make a connection” program. We did what was almost impossible for the kindergarten workers – drew the scheme maps of the tree locations on the kindergarten territory; organized the delivery of the nursery plants for the forest corner and the fertile soil for the seedlings and flowerbeds; made dozens of fur fabric caps to turn the kids into the forest animals; took care of the herb, flower and shrub diversity on the territory. Thanks to this very useful work kindergarten teachers could use the educational resources of their territories more effectively. An important part of these projects were the direct communications between the students and kindergarteners, including the usage of modern informational technologies. Students took photos and videos of children’s educational and game activities, communicating with the kindergarteners in the process and even letting them to hold so attractive modern equipment in their hands. After the processing of the results the youths visited the children with a laptop and demonstrated them the last lessons, repeating their contents. Some frames were printed on the color printer and given to the kids for their personal experimental files. This way the children were easily and naturally introduced to the world of modern informational technologies.