Expert: Investment in IT education technologies contributes to the well-being of the country

The international practice shows that state investment in education and promotion of information technologies leads eventually to a considerable increase in the well-being of the country, Evgeny Koren, business development manager in public sector and education at the Representative Office of Microsoft Corporation in Belarus, said during the roundtable to discuss distance learning technologies hosted by BelTA press center

“This is our future. However, there are still a lot of unsolved issues connected to the regulatory system and the state policy on distance learning development,” stressed the expert. Evgeny Koren believes that available sophisticated distance education technologies offered by educational establishments will help to increase the export of education services and attract more students, both local and international. The country in general will benefit considerably from this.

Development of education technologies, including distance learning technologies, is among Microsoft priorities. A lot has already been done, namely, the Microsoft SharePoint platform and the Office365 package with the Lync product, helping to build a distance learning system quickly and easily. Besides, it is possible to develop solutions for particular universities, schools, etc. A lot of educational establishments already use Microsoft products. The Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics (BSUIR), which is the leader of distance education in Belarus, is one of them.

Microsoft has recently developed an integrated offer for the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Belarus. “It is a set of educational products and resources that provide all the teachers, lecturers, students and scholars with an easy access to the technologies,” explained Evgeny Koren.

What is at issue is licensed software that includes the Office365 Pro Plus package and the SharePoint platform for distance learning and electronic documents circulation and provides access to the Microsoft IT Academy. The institutions that will work together with Microsoft will have an opportunity to open a branch of the IT Academy, train specialists and issue international certificates recognized by UNESCO.

“To launch this project, the key decision of the Education Ministry of the Republic of Belarus and a relevant agreement are needed. All Belarusian educational institutions will be able to join this agreement on unprecedentedly preferential terms due to the special discount for Belarus that we have received from the corporation,” noted Evgeny Koren.

The licensed agreement Enrollment for Education Solutions (EES) works as a subscription that can be prolonged annually, which facilitates organisational budget planning. The cost of the agreement for an educational establishment depends on the number of its employees. The license applies to all computers belonging to the organisation.