St Petersburg University and Rossotrudnichestvo co-launch ‘Gaining Knowledge at Home’

In the context of the coronavirus pandemic, St Petersburg University is developing new projects to support teachers in Russia and abroad. One such project is ‘Gaining Knowledge at Home’ (Знания дома). It is a series of free webinars that cover current practices of teaching general education subjects and issues in working with gifted children.

The project was launched in the summer of 2020 in cooperation with the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation (Rossotrudnichestvo). It has been attended by more than 7,800 teachers from 118 countries: Greece, Italy, the Czech Republic, Great Britain, Turkey, Armenia, the USA, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Russia, and others. 

In the 2020/2021 academic year, the top lecturers and experts from St Petersburg University will hold workshops in biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, history, pedagogy and Russian. Among the speakers are not only honoured teachers, associate professors and professors, but also young professionals and candidates of science. The project organisers plan webinars as interactive sessions: participants will be able to ask questions to speakers and get detailed answers in real time. This method of communication will help to maximise the professional knowledge of the attendees.

The project started its work on 4 December and it lasts until the end of May. In the coming month, we are going to: analyse challenging topics of the school curriculum in mathematics and history, such as ‘Equations and inequalities with modules’ and ‘Difficult issues in the 20^th century history of Russia’; deliver specialised classes on the topics of biology and physics ‘School programme on botany: myths and reality’, ‘We have dropped everything: rigid body equilibrium for real cats’; and have equally interesting webinars on chemistry and Russian.  Also, for the development of universal teaching competencies, Professor Elena Kazakova, Director of the Institute of Pedagogy at St Petersburg University, will speak on the topic ‘Giftedness and personality, and digitalisation’.

Saint Petersburg University is an university from Saint Petersburg, Russia in Europe; and recently joined the Global MOOC Alliance as one of the 20 founding members.

(Source: https://english.spbu.ru/news/4119-st-petersburg-university-and-rossotrudnichestvo-launch-a-new-series-of-seminars-of-the-joint-educational-project-gaining-knowledge-at-home; https://abiturient.spbu.ru/2616-mezhdunarodnyj-obrazovatelnyj-proekt-dlya-uchitelej-znaniya-doma.html)