Summary №1 on topic:

“Screenagers: How the Virtual Affects the Real”

Affected by the appearance of the Internet, the modern teenage groups are now more
frequently referred to as screenagers. Screenagers are basically teenagers who
predominantly spend their time in the global network. In spite of all the good that can
be found in the Internet, it still can be unsafe, especially for various age and social
groups.
As far as teenagers are concerned, they are prone to get and believe most of the
information from the Internet. Speakers Tuta Larsen, Eugenia Shokina, Alexander
Kolmanovsky, Oscar Hartman and Vasily Vakulenko talk about whether teenagers’
presence in the Internet should be controlled or not, and if yes – then how?
Tuta Larsen strongly believes that there should be strict control over children and
teenagers’ Internet activity. They should not rely on the Internet as a way of
entertainment (e.g. social networks, video-hostings, etc.) but only think of it as a
source of valuable information (and only if it is necessary). According to the speaker,
a child or a teenager should not be left alone in front of the computer that is why
parental control is a must-have. Tuta Larsen reckons that the Internet is just like TV or
radio – a source of information; it should not be put at the center of children and
teenagers’ lives. Instead, the real life should be cherished: it is important to make the
real life more enthralling and exciting.
Eugenia Shokina supposes that it is impossible to monitor all the stream of
information that teenagers receive. However, parents still can have parental control or
give a restricted amount of time for browsing the Internet. The speaker highlights that
it is essential to have trustworthy parent-child relationships: if children trust you, they
will always ask for help or advice on how to behave in uncertain situations.
Alexander Kolmanovsky is certain that any form of control over teenagers’ Internet
activity is just unpractical. For that very reason, it is important to bring the young
people to conscious use of the global network. He believes that it is much more
advantageous to influence children by explaining what and how to do something in the
Internet than simply restricting it.
Oscar Hartman thinks that the Internet can help teenagers develop self-control that it
needed for safe Internet activity. He states that children should be autonomous (or
independent) and that it done simply by making mistakes.
Vasily Vakulenko agrees with Eugenia Shokina in the opinion that parents should be
an authority – they are the first example to children. The speaker believes that it is not
at all possible to restrict everything. However, there will be no need in that if there is
trust relationship between parents and children.
Besides the mentioned opinions above, there are several key points concerning the
problem:
 the negative or positive influence is not connected with content, but the way the
content is interpreted;
 the more influence a parent puts on a child, the less respect a parent gets, and
the child has an even bigger will to taste the forbidden fruit;
 it is essential to install values in children as that is their main regulator in their
Internet browsing;
The speakers also agreed on the point that at present teenagers think of Internet more
than just entertainment – it is a serious instrument that it used for work and studies.
And with the help of parents, the teenagers can get a clearer picture of how to use the
Internet in the most efficient and safe way.

Summary №2 on topic:
“Necessary to Engage, but Not Let Go”

It is important to hold students’ attention during lessons, especially at distance

learning, as the progress reached during a course of study is significantly low. That is
demonstrated by the metric systems of educational platforms such as Maximum,
Coursera, etc. Speakers Mikhail Sverdlov, Ivan Diatchenko, Daniil Terentyev and
Dmitry Bubnov talk about the technologies they use in the platforms to interact with
students in the most productive and exciting ways.
Mikhail Sverdlov brings up statistics to emphasise the need of keeping students
attentive to the course: about 20% of students that take online courses have no purpose
of studies, 60% of students cannot immediately explain why they are studying, but
later on seem to define the purpose, and only 20% have purpose initially.
In order to achieve their goal, they employ several technologies in their platforms:
individual classes only (one student and one teacher), more opportunities for training
and more challenges, new interface that combines content and video-conference, a
mobile application and progress bars and statistics for students.
Ivan Diatchenko mentions the technology called “Pool”. It allows making classes
more engaging for students by creating a contextualized situation. Moreover, the tasks
let student work not on quantity, but on quality.
Daniil Terentyev states that to understand how to hold students’ attention, they need
to know the purpose or demotivators of studies. For that reason, they developed a test
that can analyse the level of soft skills which are crucial in corporate learning. The test
contains open-ended questions which have no regard to social prejudices or standards.
Based on the result, it can make a plan of developing soft and hard skills, define the
factors that can influence the process of studies and choose a more appropriate format
of studies.
Dmitry Bubnov believes that the more analytics of his progress a student sees, the
better his motivation is. The platform lets students monitor their current or general
progress and is based on the Plario Approach.