Abstract:

Nowadays specialists need to acquire professional competences as well as to develop critical thinking, collaborative skills and information literacy. Thus there comes a necessity to use efficient educational technologies. The article describes the experience of teaching “Information technology in education” to Master students majoring in “Education”.

Project-based learning was implemented with the help of group-project work based on students’ collaboration. It promoted problem-solving skills, team-working skills and the usage of information technologies (IT) for developing and presenting the project.

Students’ ability to comprehend and implement knowledge and skills acquired in different spheres is the aim of project-based learning. Master students, taking a course “Information technology in education”, got bachelor’s degrees in different spheres, for example, teaching English/Russian in secondary schools and universities, foreign languages in professional communication, Tatar language and literature, artistic education. Due to this fact, modern educational theories and technologies as well as project themes corresponded to the subject content. The projects’ target audience (schoolchildren and students) was also taken into consideration. Master students developed and practiced all the stages of project work both as teachers and students to make sure that they understand the aims, content, implementation and peculiarities of project-based learning.

IT, social services and messengers were widely used for distant team-working as well as for discussing and presenting the projects. Master students chose the type of project presentation. This could either be a PPT-presentation, a videoclip, a website. When presenting the results, Master students used interactive blocks to communicate with the audience.

Keywords:

Project-based learning, critical thinking, team-working, information literacy.