Problems of Education in the 21st Century

5-6

Authors: Vincentas Lamanauskas

This is the third edition of a new scientific collection Problems of Education in the 21st Century. The articles included in the publication discuss the issues of modern education. It is a great responsibility for writing such an editorial, because it should correspond to the ideas and conclusions expressed by the authors and highlight them from some other points of view of potential readers. On the other hand, it is very important to express the view of editorial board, try to discern certain research trends of modern education and its spheres. The purpose of this publication is unique, that is, try not only to convey, but also synthesize educational experience of East and West. This is a complex and ambitious task, but necessary, trying to perceive similarities as well as differences and also expectable development perspectives. Thus, on behalf of the editorial board I would like to thank all this volume article authors for their contribution to the development of educational research studies, their ambition to get acquainted with very complicated education, teaching and learning phenomena, ability to develop interdisciplinary, methodological thinking and action. Only such thinking and action approach has decisive significance towards education quality.

26-32

Authors: Igors Ivashkins

The present paper deals with application of the Internet network for English teaching as foreign language. The aim of the paper includes two pedagogical aspects. The first is theoretical and traces the role of computers in the approaches to foreign language teaching such as structural, cognitive and sociocognitive. The second – discusses the types of reading by means of information technology and the application of the internet recourses and tools for educational needs: an electronic book, a group’s address and hypertext reading.

40-47

Authors: Oleg Popov

This paper examines current changes in the value-base of science education curricula. One of the theoretical instruments used to describe values in science education is the notion of “curriculum emphases” developed by Roberts (1982). The evolution of values in school subjects goes hand in hand with general value-shifts in society that Bauman (2000) describes as ‘liquid modernity’ and ‘liquid life’. Kress (2000) argues that whereas the previous era required an education for stability, the coming era requires an education for fluidity and instability. Similar arguments for the “appreciation of irreducible uncertainty and multiple perspectives” in science education are also proposed by Gray and Bryce (2006). The present paper suggests a conceptual framework for considering curricular values in science education and describes currently shifting priorities in curricular values towards more ‘light’ and ‘soft’ science education. It is also argued that the democratic science education curriculum should provide space for students to pursue liberal education values as well as humanistic values. This also poses new challenges for science teacher education.

56-78

Authors: Margarita Vilkonienė, Vincentas Lamanauskas, Rytis Vilkonis

The primary purpose of the progressing international scientific project ARiSE – is to test pedagogical effectiveness introducing augmented reality (AR) into the classroom and creating remote collaboration between classes around the AR display systems. ARiSE will develop an AR platform and associated pedagogical use cases, enabling teachers to promote, with a moderate effort, new teaching practices for teaching scientific and cultural content in primary and secondary school. The aim of the project is to offer to the group of students the possibility of ‘playing’ with virtual objects and thereby to perform learning by doing instead of learning by reading. The research was carried out at Siauliai University in Lithuania. 38 respondents - experts assisting students with special educational needs in teaching/learning (psychologists, speech therapy experts, special pedagogues and the specialists from the education department) took part in this research. The focus groups were formed requiring indiscretion i.e. the group members were not allowed to make any specific impact on one another (in terms of work place, competence and social status). Thus, 6 groups of respondents were set up.

87-92

Authors: Volodymyr Boublik, Mariya Gornostay

Personalized support for users becomes very important and integral part of many information systems. It allows proposing to a user courses or news which the user may be interested in. Personalization makes information systems more user-friendly, increases their popularity, users more often come back to such systems and generally users' satisfaction increases. This paper provides comprehensive overview of recommender systems applicable for e-Learning, their architecture. It shows role of personalization for e-Learning and opportunities which can be covered by this technique. The work describes types of recommender systems and the ways they can be used in e-Learning; data-mining algorithms and methods are provided. Ways of their optimization for e-Learning environment which allow decreasing recommendation time and increasing recommendation quality are shown. А hybrid personalization system for e-Learning environment has been proposed.

102-109

Authors: Irina Moiseenko, Natalya Zamkovaya

These days the mastery of the Internet or at last the proper know-how needed for this sort of work is regarded among the same basic skills of civilized person as an ability for reading or writing. The necessity of developing these skills among the people in the large scale has been realized in Estonia on the state level in the first years of newly regained independence. So it was back in the year of 1995 when there was developed the large-scale project named “Tiger’s jump” / when Estonia joined in the global project with the purpose to provide all municipal schools / all sort of schools and colleges with the means for using the Internet connections or so to speak “to open the way out into world-wide web or Internet”. According to US researchers most of the schools in US / EU countries are connected / have links with the quick-system Internet. In Estonia that quick-system Internet-connections are at the disposal for 90% of schools. Furthermore, that our joining the global project / that above-mentioned project was successful we have the corroborative fact of including Tallinn, the capital of Estonian Republic with the same league as London and Tokio, both the capitals of the most powerful countries and with the best equipment and connections to the Internet. However such technical equipment in the possession of the schools by itself is not a guarantee for any effective using of Internet-provided means and resources in the educational process. Researches into the most popular educational methods described by authors of teacher’s books, for example in the field of Russian language teaching shows, that aforementioned resources are far from fully used. These were the facts that triggered the creation of current research paper with the double kernel-points of considering theoretical aspects and offering practical methods for introduction of contemporary powerful and extensive technical means into the language-educational process. With that purpose in sight, using most direct and picturesque examples we are describing in our research paper several different ways of using Internet in the educational process, then the means for further improvement of teacher’s books and by last but not least we are considering the best ways for introducing these new methods into the real practice of language-teaching. The results of our research may be used for further developing and increasing the effects of an educational process in a whole and the system of foreign language studying in particular.