DISTANCE EDUCATIONAL EVENTS AS A PHENOMENON OF OPEN EDUCATION

A significant feature of modern education is its tendency to the openness and diversification (multiforming and multilevel). It makes us turn to the searches of open education forms which include realization of e-learning events in the pedagogical community (projects, contests, quizzes, promotions, web-quests, trainings, master-classes, web-conferences, barcamps and the like) designed for children, adult or mixed audience. Such events refer to informal education and are realized by the tools from social Internet and by virtue of their specifics they are able to react flexibly to the educational needs. The article reviews a theoretical base and methodology of creation and organization of an educational event as a phenomenon of open education. The principles of distance educational event organization and moderation are enunciated for different categories of learners. The most important principles are openness and availability for all willing learners, interactivity of education activity, voluntariness of participation, niche targeting to the participants, availability of permanent and rapid feedback and continuity of event moderation, obligatoriness of both activity and result expertise, compliance with netiquette rules, ethics, copyright law, enabling of information security, unselfishness of organizers and moderators of the event. The article describes the steps of creation and structure of the event. The distance educational event includes 5 obligatory steps. Step1: topic definition, target group and creation of mission statements (aims and objectives). Step 2: structure definition (main units) and terms of the event. Step 3: choosing the network platform and selection of the main web-tools for the event realization and communication and feedback organization. Step 4: public awareness campaign about the events in web-sites, using e-mail or social network. Step 5: an event realization according to the modular structure. There are 4 modules which are distinguished as invariant: motivational, informational, practical and evaluative-reflexive. The motivation of the participants is supported by using of gamification elements. In the article there is a description of an example of a teacher virtual summer camp realization “Together to Success!” in the regional site of project activity “Wiki Vladimir” within the framework of professional development for educationalists. Thereby, distance education events realized in informal niche of open education facilitate the task solving of diversification of modern education and allow it to react to the educational needs of all learner categories flexibly, promptly and adequately.

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