Ïåäàãîãè÷åñêèå íàóêè/2.Ïðîáëåìû ïîäãîòîâêè
ñïåöèàëèñòîâ.
Khalezova Liubov, PhD
Sevastopol Humanitarian
Institute, Russia
GLOBALISM
AND PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION
The content of professional education
includes both general and proficient preparation. Even the changes of
qualitative characteristics of educational process have not ruined the main aim
of the teaching and studying. The triad “target – process - result” still shows
we are here to prepare a highly qualified professional. This content of
education is designed by the standards of compulsory education and is targeted
to the forming of at least minimum level of knowledge and skills.
Nowadays situation shows us that all the
knowledge our students have been accumulating in the subject-oriented system of
education is not at all needed in the era of marketing relations and economy.
What we need now is to change the slogan
“education FOR the whole life” into “education THROUGH the whole life”.
The sphere of education service is now
getting wider and wider which requires teachers to be extremely mobile and
ready to non-stop education and development.
A lot has been said about pros and cons of Internet access during the
lectures at the university and about advantages and disadvantages of internet
as an assistant in self-education. We are not going to speak about
psychological or behavioral problems of Internet-addicted gamers. Our aim is to
attract attention of those who are really interested in promoting themselves on
the labour-market (both teachers and students).
Modern technology enables everybody (both
teachers and students) to upgrade their knowledge with the help of different
sites.
Contemporary students (the ones who are
really interested in developing themselves for their own future but not those
who kill their time playing computer games or chatting in social networks) to
become “virtual ones” only need the knowledge of English, Internet access and
at least an hour a day to study. Teachers need the same.
Why has on-line education become so
avant-garde? Russia being a rich country has a great potential in the form of
new generation as well. Good education costs a lot; the other point is that
nowadays there is already no “local” science. The specialist in your majoring
subject might live in Washington, Paris, London or Buenos Aires. How to pick
them up all together? Globalization is the answer. And Internet, of course!
A person (both a teacher and a student)
with an enquiring and inquisitive mind can easily get access to the lectures of
the most profound professors worldwide. These lectures give the opportunity not
only to “be present” at the virtual laboratory or class and improve your
knowledge but also to get a certificate if needed.
The best courses are presented at the following sites:
- www.coursera.org – one of the
largest compilations on-line lectures. The leading universities of Europe and
the USA are accommodating and adding hundreds of coursers (art, history,
mathematics, literature, computing, etc.)
- www.edx.org – project of
Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology together with 10
other educational establishments offers not only lectures but a complex of
lessons with tests and possibility to communicate with the teachers as well.
- www.udacity.com – designed by
Stanford University professors and is mainly dedicated to computes science and
Math.
- www.khanacademy.org – one of a
few sites visited by 6 mln monthly. Lectures presented on this site have been
translated by volunteers into 24 languages.
Those who have already completed several courses claim that first it was
the way of broadening the outlook which later finished with the possibility to
be promoted professionally.
So innovations are already here, we only need to accept the best such
innovations have to offer. Anyway the world is changing dramatically and the desideratum
of life is changing together with it. The aspiration of a teacher is to be
ready to infect the student with the desire to cogitation and questioning as
well as to teach them how to study by themselves and form the skill of looking
for information, analyzing it and later applying it at the working place.