Abstract:

At the present, with the start of the implementation of the program “The Digital Economy in the Russian Federation”, system of education is waiting for inevitable changes, since personnel and education are declared as a priority. There are already presented nine federal projects (“Teacher of the Future”, “Digital School”, etc.) which will help to move to the automated workflow management, work with digital tools, usage of a wide range of modern approaches and educational technologies.

In the Republic of Tatarstan (Russia) in-service EFL teachers are provided with advanced vocational training on the base of the Institute of Philology and Intercultural Communication (Kazan Federal University). The training program includes the module section that is aimed to improve ICT competency of teachers. In accordance with the requirements of the Professional Standard of a Teacher, ICT competency of a teacher consists of:
1) general ICT competency;
2) general pedagogical ICT competency;
3) subject-pedagogical ICT competency.

Taking into account the realities of the information society the module section should solve following tasks:
a) introduce in-service EFL teachers the main advantages of use of cloud computing technologies in education;
b) provide practical skills in Google Suite (GMail, Google Sites, Google Drive, etc.);
c) introduce feasibility of the project technology for in-service EFL teachers for collaborative work using cloud computing technologies.

Since Google Suite give the opportunities for learning, communication and collaboration, course participants are offered to create group works based on project technology using Google Suite. Performing projects in groups using ICT develops teacher’s critical thinking, allows to move from the traditional role of leader in class to the role of facilitator, prompts pedagogical and organizational solutions to learning situations, allows to improve ICT competency.

This article represents experience and result of improvement of ICT competency of in-service EFL teachers who participated in advanced vocational training on the base of Kazan Federal University in 2015-2017. The results of the survey among teachers showed that such Google Suite as Gmail and Google Drive are already widely used. Performing group projects by in-service EFL teachers on English approved that each of them is ready for further use of Google Suite (Google Docs, Forms, Google Sites, etc.) and project technology for collaborative work in educational process. As a result, students can form and develop foreign language communicative competency, use English as a means of collecting information, raise interest in improving the achieved level of proficiency in English.

Keywords:

Advanced vocational training, ICT competency of in-service EFL teacher, cloud computing technologies in education, Google Suite.