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Let’s Unite Ukraine with Innovations. Outspoken Insights / The PATRIOTS team

Viev the version on lb.ua

 

I know that my blogs on lb.ua don’t read by thousands of people. But they are read by those who make government decisions and influence the formation of international politics. I ask you to find only 10 minutes to watch the video I made yesterday at our Science & Digital [not] School high in the mountains at the International Green School - openpolicy.org.ua/igs.

And after watching this video:

 

• прочитати блог.

 

• read this blog.

On the video, you can see the project on coding presented by Iryna Hrushkovska. She is a professional working with children, and she is from Marinka, Donetsk Oblast. From that Marinka, on the road from which snipers attacked the military medics' car by fire on July 2. Not just fired at but hunted for it until destroyed.

https://www.facebook.com/100006634601281/posts/2474892936075169?s=100006634601281&sfns=xmo

 

 

 

Photo from the Church of Holy Virgin’s Facebook page

 

 

At the same time, Iryna and her daughter Varvara took another road – the mountain one. Also difficult and risky. They went to Kosmach village which is in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, to the International Green School. No, it’s not shooting on sight here. Here, there’re simply no roads. But now this post is not about the risks of decentralization. But about the world, trust, and access to education of the 21st century:

 

On the video, you can see two young mothers - Iryna Hrushkovska and Natalia Sarana (a teacher from Rubizhne, Luhansk Oblast, a mother of two children). Yesterday, they created the Patriots team and made a coding/programming project about Ukraine. They did this together with Jan Shynkaruk, a student of the displaced Pervomaisk Industrial and Pedagogical Technical School. That only displaced school with great potential and with no less great risk of closure in Rubizhne.

 

 

When Rubizhne was shelled, Natalia was pregnant and waited for her son. She ran home to her daughter Nastia. Then, in 2014, she was 8 years old. Now Nastya is 13, and her brother Potap is 4. He likes to study both the onion and the rose under the microscope with his mother. He has his own garden-bed of cucumbers and corn there - in Rubizhne, where he stayed with his father. And Nastia is now with her mother here at the Green School.

 

 

Yesterday Nastya presented ZOOM as a tool not only for communication but also for education in the 21st century.

 

 

 

This (and much more) is what they learned during the digital project with their peers from Israel during a joint project with the International Green School from MASHAV - http://openpolicy.org.ua/news/253/.

So, yesterday, these two mothers united in a small big team "Patriots" while studying in our digital laboratory.

 

 

The Patriots team at the International Green School

 

It is difficult to put into words what we all felt when we watched this project and listened to the National Anthem of Ukraine... This needs to be seen. If you have not watched the video to the end, I suggest to see at least the time interval from 1:49 to 3:36 minutes. Yes, we cried... and I am not ashamed of these tears.  As well as I am not ashamed of that youth which there in the East, studies in the displaced high schools, in particular, Pervomaisk Industrial and Pedagogical Technical School.

I suggest you read further this long informal blog only after viewing these 3 minutes.

 

You know, that young people, those students and schoolchildren who today came here, high in the mountains, to learn GREEN STREAM techniques, flourished in front of my eyes for these few days. Varvara, daughter of Iryna, stopped crying. She began to create a shadow theater, assemble a robot, make a spider from straw, work with ambassador volunteers who built the stairs yesterday at school, and today brilliantly presented a media plan for promoting GREEN STREAM education.

 

In the photo: GREEN STREAM ambassadors, students and schoolchildren from Starobilsk (Luhansk Oblast), Myrnograd (Donetsk Oblast), Marinka (Donetsk Oblast), Mariupol (Donetsk Oblast), Rubizhne (Luhansk Oblast), Stanytsia Luhanska (Luhansk Oblast)

 

And you know, the main thing is not even that. Varvara began to LAUGH. No, we don’t speak with her, students, or teachers about language, elections. About patriotism.

 

But. When they sing the National Anthem, both in children and teachers from the East tears appear on their faces. Because they know the value of these words more than we do here in the capital/capitals.

 

Now at the Green School, we study coding, robotics, and traditional Ukrainian art together. We are discussing values. We are talking about kindness and mercy, creativity and the challenges of artificial intelligence. About trust.

 

And we have a common understanding that innovative education should be the key, the platform that:

 

1) will make these children JOYFUL – children, who know what war/anti-terrorist operation (ATO)/military conflict/conflict in the east mean;

2) will provide employment in the future.

 

Therefore, I think that patriotism is not measured by the number of embroidered shirts and trips abroad. Although I love embroidery and also travel a lot abroad. Among other things, patriotism is also measured by concrete work in local communities. And first of all, this mission is put on public organizations.

 

We must create a space for innovative education of the 21st century in local communities. This is much easier to do at alternative sites. After all, it is difficult to promote it in schools since many people cannot think out of the box. Yes, some people don’t want. But there are those who CAN NOT... they need help.

 

We need to help them remember their dreams. Their childhood. Think about the future. This can be achieved in silence, and not in the bustle of reports and deadlines.

 

Therefore, in my very deep conviction, it’s also necessary to develop mobility among teachers and students of pedagogical institutions, future teachers. It’s necessary to develop special courses for the training of young teachers on GREEN STREAM methods in pedagogical universities/colleges. It’s necessary to create alternative network platforms where they would learn what other teachers can do in remote villages in the USA, India, Nepal, Israel and many other countries, whose experience I had the good fortune to learn during the MASHAV science education training in Jerusalem.

 

One more thing. In my opinion, in the schools on the front line/contact line/demarcation line (choose what is convenient for you) Internet fibre-optic cable needs to be laid. It’s necessary to buy tablets. No, they don’t need expensive smart boards and repairs. I appreciate the efforts of ADRA, UNICEF, and other partners of the Education Cluster in this direction.

And I also suggest:

 

1) purchase tablets, optic fibre and the Makey Makey kit https://makeymakey.com for learning how to encode;

2) teach teachers and teach parents;

3) show these laboratories at the Peace Forum in Sviatohirsk (Donetsk Oblast), which will be held September 19-21. And I do not believe that donors don’t have the money for this. It’s nickel-and-dime, compared with those funds that are spent on other projects. Therefore, I would also like to wish the transparency of not only the Ukrainian authorities but also international partners...

 

Returning to the coding/programming labs for children and parents, I will write about the main KPI of these efforts. Then they - both children and parents - will understand why they need math and physics. And they will start laughing. Because gaming and creating heroes from plasticine for a game are not just relaxation and fun learning of coding. This is what will give the prospect of the 21^st-century education for children and young people.

 

Can we open such green schools together in houses in Ukrainian villages?!

 

… Oh, I know that for a part of middle-level officials in the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (MoES) it will now be very funny. How funny it was when we met at meetings on scientific lyceums and when math teacher from India Amol Pehab (Ph.D.), also a graduate of the MASHAV program, told how he teaches children in rural areas. Keep laughing... and at a frantic pace of overseas business trips to India, Denmark, the USA, Finland, etc - yet find an opportunity to meet with these schoolchildren and students. Do not you work for them?..

 

Your laughter will not stop us ...because these young people who are on video frames are crying when they sing the National Anthem of Ukraine ...and we are crying with them. We cry and rejoice because we HAVE MET. Because we are TOGETHER with them. We are those brilliant teachers from the leading innovative educational institutions of Ukraine who have now come to teach at the Green School - from the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute, Children's Engineering Academy, Novovolynsk Scientific Boarding school (that is how I will call them, even if they do not receive this status and additional budget funding, and even if the land is taken from the Children's Engineering Academy, as was in the case with the Ukrainian Physics and Mathematics Lyceum and Kyiv Natural-Scientific Lyceum No. 145).

 

Anyway, we already have a network of people who not only cry when they perform the Anthem. But they also know how to dream, act together and rejoice. The world has changed. Today, we, civil society, and those who act openly and horizontally with us can influence the solution of problems of access to education in the 21st century. And... To influence the solution of the most important problem - the formation of trust.

 

And then, the IT cluster will be created not only in Lviv, Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Dnipro. But there, in Marinka, Rubizhne. Avdiivka and Pervomaisk will also reach it.

 

This will be the return of Ukraine ...

 

P.S. Who has 5 minutes to learn more about our GREEN STREAM program and reflections after visiting entry-exit checkpoints, read the following blog:

https://ukr.lb.ua/blog/irina_zhdanova/406995_mrii_ditey_mayut_kordoniv.html.  

 

By the way, it will save time on visiting schools there, in the East, at a frantic pace of overseas business trips and the preparation of regulations. Just get around to read it in silence…

 

One last thing.

 

I would like to thank those without whom this small big project “Let's Open GREEN STREAM” of the Open Policy Foundation, during which we opened Science & Digital [not] School for teachers and schoolchildren from the east - would be impossible:

 

The Embassy of the Lithuanian Republic in Ukraine, the Embassy of the Lithuanian Republic in Israel, the Embassy of Israel in Ukraine, Embassy of Ukraine in the State of Israel.

 

And to ambassadors who have a big heart and are not tired of helping Ukraine.

And to Potap, who sent the cucumbers by the hand of his mother from Rubizhne to Kosmach. Fragrant. Sincere.

Thank you!

 

 

Happy Varvara with friends from Rubizhne, Myrnograd, Starobilsk, and Zhytomyr in the Coding Laboratory at the International Green School, together with a teacher from the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute - Valentyna Pikalova, July 5, 2019

 

Iryna Zhdanova, the Founder of the International Green School, Executive Director of the Open Policy Foundation, Ph.D. in History

 

Photos by Iryna Zhdanova, Nataliya Matsay