Main Activities

Main Activities

During the Medium-Term period, IITE carries out its activities in four main programme areas:

• Supporting National Capacities for ICT Application in Educational Systems
• Forming an Information Environment for Education
• Improving the Quality of Education through ICT Usage
• Promoting ICT Usage in Education for Learning to Live Together

The realization of the IITE strategic objective is led in three correlated programme activities’ domains, namely: research, training and clearing house activities.

Research on ICT application in education is regarded as the central activity. It lays the foundation for further project development, elaboration of training and methodological materials, carrying out training activities, providing assistance to UNESCO Member States in policy formulation, and in the implementation of national pilot projects, and supplying them with information in the field.

As to the training activities, in accordance with the Institute’s strategic approach, training and retraining of educational personnel in the application of ICTs in education have been a top priority, resulting in a multiplier effect. The main target groups of training activities are the following: policy- and decision-makers in the educational sphere, and heads of national and regional education systems; heads of pre- and in-service teacher-training institutions, trainers of trainers for ICTs in education; and teachers, ICT school coordinators and other educational personnel. For the training activities the Institute elaborated and uses its own education programme, which consists of a basic course, five specialized training courses of a modular character, and sets of support training materials.

Comparative Advantages

For the implementation of its strategic objective, IITE concentrates its resources on attaining real results and focuses its efforts on the activities where it has a comparative advantage and gained experience.

To provide an effective correlation between the programme activities’ domains IITE uses a long-term approach to the development of its projects:

• ICTs in Distance Education
• Indicators of ICT Application in Education
• ICTs in Special Education; ICTs in Technical and Vocational Education and Training
• Ethical, Psychological and Societal Problems of the Application of ICTs in Education
• Education, Art and ICTs: Integration for the Development of One’s Personality
• ICTs in Teaching/Learning Foreign Languages
• ICTs in History Education
• Digital Libraries for Education
• Education via the Internet
• Designing Information Environment for Education

During the period of 2000-2003 IITE fulfilled 17 long-term projects, 7 national pilot projects, 5 sub-regional projects; held 44 expert meetings, research seminars and workshops, 4 round tables. The Institute took part, co-organized and/or co-sponsored 30 international forums; carried out 36 training sessions, seminars, workshops and 15 thematic online seminars; published 66 analytical surveys, specialized training courses, sets of training, methodological and information materials.

Since 2000, about 200 experts from near 50 countries and organizations took part in the IITE research and training activities, expert meetings, research seminars and workshops. During 2000-2001 more than 1,000 educators from 18 UNESCO Member States were retrained at 17 training seminars and workshops held on the basis of the IITE educational programme. In 2002-2003 IITE organized 19 training sessions, seminars and workshops for more that 500 educators from 28 countries.

Highlights of concrete projects

Several IITE activities should be underlined as those which have the most impact on the progress in ICT application in education. Striving to contribute to the development of national action plans on the use of ICTs for attaining the EFA goals, IITE has launched a high level seminar Towards Policies for Integration ICTs into Education for decision- and policy-makers. The seminar was successfully implemented twice for ministers, deputy ministers and heads of relevant departments of the ministries of education in April – June 2001 in Moscow (13 countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Republic of Moldova, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan) and in Bangkok in February – April 2003 (11 Asia-Pacific countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Iran, Mongolia, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam). The third seminar is planned for February – April 2004 for decision-makers and policy-makers in education from 10 South Eastern Europe countries.

The sub-regional project Information and Communication Technologies for the Education Capacity Development Towards the Construction of a Knowledge Society for the countries of South Eastern Europe started by IITE and financed by the Japanese-Funds-in-Trust is aimed at strengthening national educational capacities by harnessing ICTs for education and diversifying their application for training purposes. Another IITE sub-regional project Information and Communication Technologies for Higher Distance Education Usage in Sub Saharan Africa financed from UNESCO Extra-Budgetary Programme for Technical Services to Member States Capacity Building for Education for All (EFA) started in October 2003 in Pretoria, South Africa. Following the recommendations by the participants of the expert meetings on ICT usage in distance education held by IITE in Tanzania (2001) and Kenya (2002), the IITE specialized training course ICTs in Distance Education was adapted to the needs of countries in Africa. The trainees from 11 countries of the region as well as from IICBA effectively master ICT usage in higher distance education.