Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 5 (2010 3) 800-804
УДК 371
SFU e-Library Content as the Means
to Overcome Information and Educational Deficiency
at Secondary Schools of the Krasnoyarsk Region
Vera V. Korshunova* and Elena M. Nazarenko
Siberian Federal University 79 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041 Russia 1
Received 6.10.2010, received in revised form 13.10.2010, accepted 20.10.2010
Modernization of the educational system and the shift toward implementing interactive technologies change the teaching and learning process. The project launched at the Institute of Education, Psychology and Sociology of the Siberian Federal University together with the Government of the Krasnoyarsk region is aimed at the formation of social and educational content and assisting students and teachers to form the skills and abilities to use information resources effectively. In this respect SFU e-library is a unique resource for human resources development at the Krasnoyarsk region.
Keywords: e-library, educational environment, social and educational content
Introduction
Modernization of the educational system, changes in the educational standards, realization of the national project "Our New School", use of interactive technologies and ICT overcome barriers and save the time. Social networks and services based on Web 2.0 technologies become popular. Internet is much spoken about as the technological basis of education due to the communication opportunities it offers. The process of education now should be organized taking into consideration the changes in the modern world in general and the requirements to the form and the content of modern teaching and learning materials.
The two opposite tendencies in the Internet could be observed recently. These are information network overload; and formal
equality of competent and non-competent authors, authoritative and amateur sources in the global network that decreases the quality of content. The project launched at IEPS SFU together with the Government of the Krasnoyarsk region is aimed at the formation of social and educational content and assisting students and teachers to form the skills and abilities to use information resources effectively.
Urgent Problems
Secondary education today is the art of active children's protection from the global Internet information outflow. Active protection means that secondary education does not cut the schoolchildren off the Internet publications but teaches to filter information, get from the Internet what is needed for solving the problem
* Corresponding author E-mail address: elena_rodchenko@mail.ru
1 © Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
or reaching the goal. This is the task for a mature personality familiar with the existing deficits, able to foresee the problems and singe out the essence. The experience of working with secondary school students, methodologists, pedagogues proves that the target groups are able to carry out partial active protection. The groups we worked with undertake efforts to single out important, useful and urgent information. We faced the necessity to help secondary school students form the skills and abilities to use information resources effectively.
One of the major tasks for secondary schools is the analysis of Internet educational market including educational environments and their content, e-portfolio system, e-libraries. Formation of the requirements applicable to the electronic resources and ensuring the quality of education within electronic environments is also needed. It should be also taken into consideration that educational institutions have strict requirements to the content of the global network - the so called protection filter.
IT and innovative tendencies within the school educational process as well as the informatization programs undertaken at the educational institutions indicate that there is the lack of pedagogues, secondary school students, parents and administrators for working out the unified integrated electronic educational resource. There exist a lot of requirements applicable to such product: security system, accessibility of the resource to all categories of users, Web 2.0 technologies support and many others.
Results of the Investigation
We analyzed the programs aimed at informatization of educational institutions. This analysis revealed that within the development of the school educational content most attention is given to the virtual educational environments intended for solving specific problems. Secondary
schools of Kirovsky rayon at Krasnoyarsk undertake research aimed at developing new shells for solving specific problems in different spheres of school educational process. The main function is electronic repository of topically structured material (analogue of e-library) as the portent of the integrated information environment of the city.
The idea of electronic repositories of topically structured material united into one information environment connecting all the municipal secondary schools is not the attempt to follow the fashion; it is the effort to describe a new phenomenon - essentially new class of systems for accumulating and distributing information in the electronic form. Electronic libraries belong to the new generation of systems and correspond to the existing requirements of the municipal educational institutions. We studied the reports devoted to the results of the programs aimed at informatization of secondary schools during 2003-2010. We came to the conclusion that secondary schools made efforts to organize e-libraries within their local networks or within the structure of their web-sites; these efforts were not successful. It is evident that for organizing e-libraries and developing their content the help of specialists is needed.
Here is to our opinion the most successful example of school e-library project (http://gimn6. ru/asp/infoteka/). The information repository presented on the web-site is the component of the virtual multimedia environment teaching the students network interaction and intercultural communication. The tests offered at the web-site show that use of the virtual network has many advantages resulting in reaching educational goals. Teachers of the Krasnoyarsk municipal secondary school N°7 show successful experience of implementing their research work into practice.
The work we carried out allows defining the goals which the developers of e-library school content are to achieve:
1. make information more accessible to the participants of the school educational process;
2. contribute to the preservation of the scientific and cultural heritage of the past;
3. increase the effectiveness of teaching and learning in secondary education.
Thus, educational institutions of Krasnoyarsk face the contradiction: the necessity of working out a united electronic library for municipal educational institutions and the lack of resources to fulfill the task.
It is evident that the basic elements and structures of e-library school content based on the virtual type of information educational environment for municipal educational institutions may become the following: the virtual media collection, audio and video materials, teachers' and students' e-portfolio repository, virtual question-answering system, computer testing system with multimedia elements, the system training students to pass school graduate examinations in different school subjects, virtual library containing electronic tutorials and projects.
The first research works devoted to e-libraries appeared in Russia in the middle of 90s. From the very beginning the basic role in these investigations belonged to the enthusiasts what resulted in the spontaneous character of these works and low quality of the product in general. The state was not interested in this area of scientific investigation. In 1998 there was the initiative to start the national project on the federal level. It was not successful. The specific projects that were launched did not bring any visible effect. Some of the most successful and socially significant projects stopped when
the state funding came to an end. Spontaneous and subjective character are peculiar features of electronic libraries, they often canbe characterized as unreliable, low-quality resources. This could also be referred to many other types of resources which exist thanks to the enthusiasm of some organizations or initiative groups.
Nevertheless the existing resources and e-libraries placed in the Internet may be systematized in accord with their qualitative index and topical character. Not all the e-libraries which are published in Russian are hosted in Russia and supervised from Russia. Around 40 resources are hosted abroad, 14 in Ukraine, 7 in USA, 5 in Belorussia. Among these electronic libraries there are the resources which are very popular, e.g. Electronic Library of Alexander Belousenko, USA (http://www.belousenko. com/), Non-commercial Electronic Library "Im Werden", Germany (http://imwerden.de/), Boris Berdichevsky Literary Library, Israel (http:// www.citycat.ru/litlib/).
Conclusion
Having analyzed the existing experience we may conclude that today there exist prerequisites for partial realization of the described information structure in the system of higher professional education only; there is no prototype of such virtual intercultural environment for secondary schools neither in Russia, nor abroad.
In this respect should be underlined the place occupied by the electronic library of the Siberian Federal University. SFU e-library is unique, it plays important role in distributing positive experience. This year SFU together with the Government of the Krasnoyarsk region launched the project significant for educational institutions of the city. The goal of the project is formation of social and educational content of the SFU e-library for human resources development at the Krasnoyarsk region. Within the project
named "Social and Educational Content of SFU e-Library for Human Resources Development at the Krasnoyarsk Region: Concept and Technology" we carried out the focus-groups with teachers, administrators and secondary school teachers.
The participants, the actual e-library users (teachers, administrators and secondary school teachers) underline that the work that has been done within the project helped to overcome time, distance and financial barriers on the way to free access to information, though there is still a lot to be done. All the respondents of the focus-groups assumed that the most significant changes
are taking place in the information environment and secondary education cannot stay apart. The content offered within the SFU e-library is the innovative step to the development of the educational system at the Krasnoyarsk region and the step toward informatization.
We live within the period of information explosion. Upbringing and educating the next generation, helping young people to integrate the world information environment is mostly parents' and teachers' problem. Media education together with the electronic library integrated in the global environment and network communication will help in preparing children for adult life.
References
A. Belousenko Electronic Library, [Electronic resource] // (http://www.belousenko.com/), in Russian.
B. Berdichevsky Literary Library, [Electronic resource] // (http://www.citycat.ru/litlib/), in Russian.
Non-commercial Electronic Library "Im Werden", [Electronic resource] // (http://imwerden.de/), in Russian.
Web-site of the Krasnoyarsk Municipal secondary school Gymnasium №6 [Electronic resource] // (http://gimn6.ru/asp/infoteka/), in Russian.
Информационно-образовательные дефициты школ Красноярского края и их ликвидация средствами контента электронной библиотеки СФУ
В.В. Коршунова, Е.М. Родченко
Сибирский федеральный университет Россия 660041, Красноярск, пр. Свободный, 79
Модернизация системы образования и тенденция к внедрению интерактивных технологий меняют процесс образования. Проект, разрабатываемый Институтом педагогики, психологии и социологии Сибирского федерального университета совместно с правительством Красноярского края, направлен на формирование социального и образовательного контента электронной библиотеки, а также на осуществление помощи школьникам и преподавателям в формировании навыков и умений эффективного использования информации. В этом контексте электронная библиотека СФУ является уникальным ресурсом развития человеческого потенциала Красноярского региона.
Ключевые слова: электронная библиотека; образовательная среда; социальный и образовательный контент.