I help online schools in Russia to organize their online lessons
for comfortable use.
Not so long ago, in March 2023, I wrote an article about how, in my opinion, it is necessary to prepare for the Olympiads in Chemistry.
Since I am not a theorist, but a practitioner, and I made a preliminary program, I started to put it into practice.
First of all I decided to look at what online-schools offer for preparation, because the first step in preparation for the Olympiads is a very good study of the standard school course.
I registered with three distance learning services for school subjects, Maximum Education, Examer, and Homework, and wrote reviews on them.
One of the things that upset me — I saw that online schools, with all their declared hundreds of thousands of users, have a very strange, in my opinion, internal structure, and above all the problem is to find the necessary information.
That is, if I, the user, do not need the entire training course, but only need a couple of lessons to close the gap in knowledge, especially if I need these lessons immediately, here and now — I usually can not find these lessons quickly, and have to spend a lot of time on search. And given that the designers of each individual online school has its own understanding of how the personal account should be set up a user — knowledge of the principles of one account is absolutely useless when working in another service.
I must say that I partly understand the problems facing online schools.
The full course of education in the Russian school is long and extremely rich, and it is impossible to fit everything that is available, on one page, without making it cosmically long.
Apparently, many employees of such schools had a similar opinion, and they gave up, starting simply to produce lessons about everything, an hour or two in length, without a precise description of the topics discussed in the lesson, and without a transcript of the content.
Such lessons, for all their monumentality, are absolutely useless in the circumstances I am describing — I, and no one else, will listen to a two-hour lecture to hear, who knows when, what we need now.
Nevertheless, some modern online schools have tried to solve the described problem, and have broken down large topics (for example, Triangles in Geometry), into small lessons, that is, back to what regular textbooks offer, but at a new level, enriching the dry theory of school subjects with short videos, tests and interactivity.
Internet-lesson went the furthest along this path, of all the online schools I know, by allowing students to adjust the material available on the site for specific textbooks in the hands of the user, and even with a breakdown into Basic or Advanced levels.
And now, if I go to the library of study materials of another online service, like Foxford, or Tetrica, I get a little frustrated if the materials can’t be arranged by topic, textbook, or difficulty.
I decided to take it upon myself to inform online schools about how I think a user-friendly sorting of materials on the site should be arranged, and I wrote a short letter to the major schools.
To be fair, such sorting would have made the Olympiad preparation programs much easier for me personally.
But, of course, not just for me, but for any self-study student.
How such sorting could look in the simplest form, you can see here.
The text of the letter:
Distribution of your recorded lessons on the tasks of the OGE and EGE exams
Hello
I am Egor Kugno, a 9th grade student at school 2107.
I make a site about education, mainly about foreign medical school, I wrote to the top 300 universities in the world, got answers and now gradually publish
https://kugno.ru/obuchenie-na-vracha-v-rossii-i-za-rubezhom-perepiska-s-inostrannymi-universitetami-ministerstvami-obrazovaniya-i-organizaciyami-kuriruyushchimi-priem-i-perevod-studentov/
And I also plan (when I have more time, in summer) to make a full course of chemistry exam preparation — not in the sense of writing down the course, but in the sense of making a table of what is freely available on the Internet, so that students would not waste time looking for information, and after finding my table — immediately began to study.
This is my little project on med school admissions in 2025.
https://kugno.ru/postupaem-v-medicinskij-universitet-v-moskve-v-2025-godu-podgotovka-i-olimpiady/
About this one:
Chemistry, G.S.E.
1 task. Textbook so-and-so page 5-12, the Internet Lesson (link) , Interactive exercises (link), Video Umskul (link), Hundred (Link), Check oge (Foxford), etc.
It takes an insane amount of time, but I think I can handle it — I need such a spreadsheet first and foremost for me personally.
Nevertheless, I would be glad if you could help me a little, namely — made and sent me a table with a grouping available on your site and services such as YouTube, rootub video explanation of tasks GCSE and EGE, like
Chemistry GCSE 2023
1 task-link
2 task-link
3 task — no video, it is in the paid version, link so-and-so, up to so-and-so discount, the cost is so-and-so…..
I am pleased to publish this table on the site
My site is still small, but I’m growing pretty fast, and I think you will benefit.
And for me, of course 🙂
Ideally (if you suddenly decide to get excited) write more comments, like
Chemistry OGE 2023
1 task — Link (fresh clip).
Task 2 — Here is the link (the video was recorded in 2020, but this task hasn’t changed), etc.
But of course, you can do it without comments.
I will put on the site of any of your collections, which will send, for the GCSE, USE, and for any subjects to make each a separate article on a subject, the form:
Preparing for the OGE and USE on materials from the company ……..
Or, if you have an expert on how to name these kinds of articles — under your name.
If you can not, and there is no time, that’s okay.
I’ll still do something similar, but only sooner by August.
Thanks
I hinted to the companies that I was quite willing to publish some advertising, namely pointers to the paid extended versions of their courses.
And of course, as is customary, I personalized the letters by adding the name of the company I was writing to instead of a dotted line in the body of the letter.
I wrote to the following companies:
1. Unicum RUDN
2. Tetrica
3. Webium
4. Tutor Online
5. Lectarium
6. Skyang
7. Umskool
8. Hundred
9. MosSU
10. Shkolkovo
11. 80 points
12. USE Filin
13. Lomonosov Skool.
14. USE in law
15. Online School #1
16. USE Turbo
17. USE Studi.
And a couple or three smaller schools.
To my surprise, I couldn’t find email addresses on some schools’ websites.
I don’t trust schools that can’t be contacted via email, and schools that insist on communication via social media cause me irritation and headaches (read my tests!). And, of course, uncooperative.
Of course, I don’t expect any responses, absolutely.
The online education schools obviously don’t care about me — as you can see from my reviews, they have plenty of problems of their own.
But I think there is nothing wrong with informing schools about real user requests.
And I also read the weekly summaries of the VK and HABR sites about the development of artificial intelligence, and especially about ChatGPT.
And I have a clear feeling that if online schools don’t become IDEAL this year-then next year they may very well disappear from the market forever.
Which I certainly don’t wish them to do.
Although, of course, I will remember those of them who don’t send me the information I need.
Other articles on Moscow Medical Universities→
This article in Russian→