The forum has attracted 600 professionals from many countries.

This year's festival concentrates on contemporary challenges to teacher education, especially digitization. Among the guests are Minister of Education and Science Rafis Burganov, municipal and state officials, and education executives. They partook in a ceremony of secondary school enrolment for 7-year-olds from all across Tatarstan.

While opening the forum, Rector Ilshat Gafurov touched on the increasing role of information in today’s society. With that in mind, Kazan Federal University has put forth its University 4.0 concept, where the four pillars are education, science, cooperation with industry, and digitization. He said, “Here, at Yelabuga Institute, we are going to discuss what digitization means for education. To stay competitive, we need to follow the trends and address the new challenges.” Digitization can help personalized educational programs and monitor students' performance and psychological wellbeing in real time, he added.

Minister Burganov told the audience, “Life proves that it's not enough to know something, it's also important to know how to teach. Here in this auditorium we have people who drive the progress by education our kids. This format can widen the framework of academic dialogue.”

In total, 90 master classes, training sessions, discussions, and speeches are planned, as well as 10 expert lessons in teachers’ health maintenance, KFU’s traditional PRO Science event, and partner exhibitions.

In her greeting, Director of Yelabuga Institute Yelena Merzon said that the conference gives the opportunity to discuss how teacher-student interaction must be shaped in the era of digital technology and how to motivate children during classroom activities. As the participants opined, distance education will not replace eye-to-eye formats. That’s how the discussions started – and will go on for three days until Friday.

48 international experts from the USA, Germany, Bulgaria, Croatia, Ireland, and Lithuania have been appointed as moderators of the conference. 16 moderators are from Kazan Federal University.

Source text: Kamill Gareev

Translation: Yury Nurmeev