State Secretary in the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications Tatjana Matić, has said at the opening of the professional meeting “Information and Communication Technologies in Education”, that encouraging the use of new technologies in education is one of the priority strategic objectives of the line ministry.
“What we find of particular importance is raising of digital competences of teaching staff, which quality we’ve seen based on the prize-winning competition for teachers “Digital Class” implemented since 2011. They show great creativity in using the information and communication technologies, not only in teaching IT science, but also math, history, literature and all other subjects”, said Ms Tatjana Matić, stating that the competition has gathered over 1.300 papers available in the collection at the website of the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications.
State Secretary has stressed that the basis of contemporary teaching is building of infrastructure, reminding that the Ministry, together with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development and Microsoft company, has launched the introduction of wireless Wi-Fi network in 40 primary and secondary schools in rural areas of Serbia.
“Only the education adjusted to the times of technology in which we live can eliminate the social and economic gap between the new generations from differently developed areas and prepare new generations for the competitive market.
We don’t expect all the children to be software developers, but without digital skills, they won’t be able to be successful doctors, designers, or teachers either”, Ms Tatjana Matić has said.
She has announced a new IT caravan, educational campaign, held in 15 cities in Serbia in 2016 for 5000 primary school pupils, and which will be conducted starting of April 12 until May 25, 2017.
“Under the slogan “Smart&Safe” we promote to pupils in primary schools robotics and coding, before the upcoming introduction of IT science as a mandatory teaching programme, ICT assisted learning, educational online services, ICT use in teaching, safe online behaviour”, State Secretary has explained.
The conference “Information-communication technologies in education”, organised by Secondary school for economics, law and administration I Karlovac legacy is accompanied by an exhibition of robots, arduins and pupils’ and teachers’ achievements from entire Serbia in robot programming.
