Informatics in Education

eLearning is fast progressing scientific field proposing novel and specific approaches in a range of domains. It is well established practice in universities, schools and organizations for delivering interactive, adaptive and flexible training, taking advantage of contemporary and emerging technologies. Informatics is a continuously evolving science presenting its theoretical and practical advances applicable in various research areas, including in eLearning. The paper presents an exploration focused on the symbiotic connection between Informatics and eLearning that leads to contemporary and innovative solutions, facilitating and automating a wide variety of activities at information processing. The term eLearning Informatics is conceptualized and explained as a scientific field outlining the current research achievements and further directions for development. The applied research methodology is based on outlining the main vision in the domain eLearning Informatics through utilization of bibliometric approach and construction of bibliometric networks as well as on detailed examination of topic-related scientific papers.

On the basis of national research data on schoolchildren' achievements, the article deals with implementation of educational software in the process of teaching world study in primary school and different natural sciences in basic school. It has been established that educational software is often enough implemented during the classes on world study in primary school in comparison with natural science lessons provided in basic school. Primary educational software is regularly used in the city site, less frequently - in the regional centre and rarely in the rural area schools. On the opposite of the city site schools, basic educational software is widely employed in the rural area. The comparison of the rates of implementation of educational software during the different classes on natural sciences reveals that educational software is most frequently applied during the classes on biology, the least frequently - during the classes on physics.

This paper deals with the main problem of involving information technology in teacher education - structure and contents of teachers' training courses based on distance learning. In Lithuania, the Standard of computer literacy for educators has been developed. It should be the main source of all teachers' training courses on information technology. The Standard consists of two parts: technological and educational. The main attention of the paper is paid to the analysis and requirements of the educational part that becomes more and more urgent: it requires some psychological, cognitive, social, and pedagogical knowledge referring to the information technology usage in education. This paper comprehensively covers the problems of application of information technology in education, course planning, and implementation of distance teaching, it referring to the teachers' training course on educational issues of information technology via distance learning, carried out by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Lithuania and organized by the Centre of Information Technologies of Education, and summarises its results.