Stage I.

The start of the Teach-IT.net program goes back to the time when members of the KANA Catholic Youth Education Center (Gliwice, Poland) decided to focus their activities on improving the knowledge of Polish teachers. This convinced the workers of the Center that teachers themselves are the very people the specifics of whose profession allows with maximal speed to spread knowledge and convictions among others. The Teach-IT.net method arose on the basis of the five-year experience in instructional activity at KANA among Polish youth and teachers, which occurred in cooperation with universities in Germany and Finland. The European Commission as part of the Leonardo da Vinci Program highly evaluated and supported the educational suitability and effectiveness of the method.

The Polish side’s interest in Ukraine as a territory for spreading the Teach-IT.net method is not accidental; in particular, it was conditioned by the strategic interests of Poland in the East. Today Ukraine is not a member of the EU, and Poland is the biggest promoter of the idea of the “Europeanness” of Ukraine, sometimes more than Ukraine itself is. So KANA decided to spread what it had achieved in the area of information education to Ukrainian lands.

The Ukrainian Catholic University, a private educational institution in the city of Lviv, was chosen as the partner to realize the project. This choice was also not accidental, as, in the conviction of the Polish partners, the role of non-government organizations in the modern world is becoming more and more important, and cooperation on the non-government level, even in matters of general national scope, as a rule are transparent, flexible, and productive. So, the effect of such cooperation can create noticeable changes in government policy regarding, in the given instance, education.

In Ukraine, activity in the field of information education is not something new. Events of this type have been and are being conducting by international organizations and large corporations, the producers of modern technology and programming support. The Teach-IT.net method differs from them essentially. First of all, it foresees practical use of the knowledge acquired by the teacher in his place of work, and secondly, it creates the conditions for the teacher to continue study on the site of his own school, the place of work of each separate teacher. In addition, Teach-IT.net is characterized by entirely concrete methodical particularities that give the method additional advantages over others

The Ukrainian project began with such advantages under the name Teach-IT.net: Building an educated society in Ukraine. Using information technologies in innovative ways in the professional improvement of teachers. The executors of the project, KANA on the Polish side and the Ukrainian Catholic University on the Ukrainian, became convinced that spreading informational knowledge among Ukrainian teachers can improve the quality of education of graduates of middle schools, speeding up appropriate changes in the educational legislation of Ukraine, and also essentially influence the labor market and possibilities for Ukrainians to find employment.