Organization of media training intended for teachers in the United States and Canada

Abstract

In the time of digital technologies and transformation of teachers’ role, the problem of the lack of teachers’ media education support and their insufficient level of readiness to implement media technologies in educational process has become of vital importance. The analysis of American scientists’ ideas has resulted in the conclusion about irreversible consequences of an insufficient level of teachers’ media education that may lead to the loss of democracy in society. In the article, the author stresses the idea about the interconnection between the teachers’ level of training to incorporate media education in the process of learning and its efficiency. It is underlined that this understanding shown by state educational establishments, administrative staff, scientists and teachers is not widely accepted, which is proved by the quantity of media courses, character of training in universities and the time of such training appearance in the curriculum of pedagogical educational establishments. Until recently, in spite of inclusion of media education knowledge in curricular, teachers have been left without proper training in such an activity in the system of formal education. On the example of a number of American and Canadian universities (Indiana University Bloomington, University of Massachusetts, Manitoba University, Vancouver University), the author has distinguished the ways of future teacher media training in formal education (as special training in the area of communication, as a separate course, as components of every course, taught at university). The main peculiarity of the future teacher media training is the encouraging Centres for Online and Digital Learning and libraries which offer necessary support in conducting lessons with digital media tools, media services, consultations on doing media tasks and incorporating media in educational process in schools.