On the afternoon of July 12 Beijing time, the International Summer School jointly launched by ZJU’s College of Education and Institute of Education of Higher School of Economics kicked off! The Sino-Russian Summer School is one of the programs under the memorandum of cooperation between the two institutions. It is an important academic exchange activity under the background of One Belt & One Road. It  is the third summer school and the theme is  “Overcoming covid-19 obstacles in education: inequality, innovation, information technology”. Fifteen students from China and Russia gathered over the cloud (online) and started a 5-day program of learning and communication via video link.

On the opening ceremony of the summer school, Prof. Isak Froumin, head of Institute of Education, Higher School of Economics,delivered a welcoming speech to all participants. And along with the introduction of Prof.Anna Polyanskaya, participants got to know the past, present and future of HSE.

Followed by the opening ceremony it’s a delicately designed ice-breaker: Academic Speed-dating. Assisted by Gathertown, students were split into different groups to chat and discuss about their own academic background and study interest in a digital virtual simulations.

Ms. Cao Ruoqi, a representative of international students in HSE, made a brief presentation about the current educational policies of China and Russia, encouraging everyone into thinking: “What do I know about Russian education”, “What do I know and want to know about Sino-Russian cooperation in higher education”. All the sharing promoted mutual understanding among participants and set up a solid foundation for the following discussions and lectures.

After a short break, Irina Dvoretskayala, researcher of IOE- HSE, made a lecture about “monitors of digital transformation of schools”, pointing out that in an era of digitalization, the move to digital is the big developing trend of schools. In the lecture, Irina also introduced the 7 scales of a school’s digitalization development, the possible information sources for evaluation, and the dynamic transformation course of a school’s digital development in a methodology framework.

The first day came to an end in the introduction about the final project that students need to finish at the last class of the summer camp.

Photo by TONG Hongjie & MAO Xingjia