OREANDA-NEWS. September 1, 2011. The prime minister began his tour of the newest school in Podolsk, which opened on September 1, 2000, with a visit to a primary school class. "This year, first-grade students will study according to a new educational standard, and their class has been equipped accordingly," School Director Lyudmila Lifanova said. There is a microscope and a laptop computer on every two-person desk. Vladimir Putin was surprised. "You're going to teach the children using these?" he asked, pointing to the computers. "Why not?" replied Anna Troitskaya, a teacher. "I asked the students today how many of them can use a computer, and 15 out of the 29 children in the class said they know how."

The prime minister pointed out that there are four more children in the primary school class than the standard, adding that each of them must receive proper attention.

Putin was shown a system of knowledge monitoring, which consists of an interactive panel on which the teacher displays a question which the children answer by pressing a button on a remote console. Troitskaya invited Putin to test the system, and chose the subject of "Animate and Inanimate Nature."

The school is especially proud of its planetarium, a dome structure with a simulated Moon surface below and a "controlled" starry sky above. A teacher can choose any galaxy and enlarge it for children to inspect a star system or a planet. Putin visited the school in the daytime, so he could clearly see Europe on the sunny side of the Earth. They told him how the creation of the planetarium began with a single telescope presented to the school, and the children did everything else themselves. Even the manager of the planetarium is an alumnus of the school, Igor Kolodkin. He showed sunspots to Putin, who asked what they are. "These are areas where the temperature is lower," Kolodkin replied. "No, I don't think so," Putin said. "I think it has something to do with magnetic fields." Despite their disagreement on that particular issue, the prime minister wished Igor, a first-year student at the Cybernetics Faculty of the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute, success.

The school also has a virtual video studio, which was equipped under the Education Modernisation project. Putin watched a green screen on which an anchor read from a teleprompter while an editor added a background scene for broadcasting. This equipment can be used for live broadcasting and for making video reports, visual aids for the children's laboratory tests and even animated films. Two children who made an animated film about a stork gave their claymation "actors" to the prime minister as a present. Putin asked them about the story in their film, and they replied, "It's about the stork whose job it is to bring babies to new parents." "So it's helping carry out our demographic programme," Putin joked.

In 2009, the school launched an experiment for introducing information, communication and Internet technology into education. High school students attend the experimental class with only a laptop computer. "Depending on the task, their laptops can be used as a textbook, a notebook or a grade book," physics teacher Igor Tsarkov said. He explained how the equipment works. "The teacher can see every student. When he calls on someone, he actually activates the laptop of that student on the interactive panel, where everyone can see it," Tsarkov said. The equipment can also be used for tests, and every lesson begins with laboratory work.