Dinara Gagarina

Graduated from Perm National Research University as specialist in Mathematics, wrote PhD thesis in «IT for Education» at the Russian Academy of Education. Head of the Humanities Department of the National Research University Higher School of Economics-Perm, founder of the portal «Recreational Robotics».

Quotes

• I don't like the idea of «being useful where you were born».
• As a teacher, I don't prepare students for the city, we prepare them to live their own lives. It's one healthy way.
• Student environment is beautiful, it is very productive, every day we meet young, smart, open-minded people and we really get more from them than we give. Students inspire!
• We need to expand our boundaries; we are too limited in experience. In order to change Perm for the better, we need to see how this «better» is done at other places.

My story

I rather early decided to become mathematics teacher and never looked into other options. If someone had told me back in school that I would be involved in history or humanities, I would have laughed him in the face. My way from mathematics to history was long. I didn't like history at school. But when I started teaching in the university, I fell in love with students from historical department, started partaking in the projects of the laboratory of historical computer science, and by 2009, I was senior lecturer of the department of the contemporary history in PSNRU. Along the way, I took different courses in Germany, Austria, tens of them in Russia. My field of work is Digital Humanities; it is absolutely international and interdisciplinary thing.

I was always interested in the educational process, especially in the higher education. I see that Higher School of Economics is different from other universities in the country by the way it is functioning and concepts of education it is sharing. I like these concepts very much. NRU HSE-Perm is one of the four branches connected together.

«You can't kick a student out of class, he has a right for education,» director of the school where I started at the age of 20, once told me. This phrase still lives in my head. I am outraged when a student is dismissed for something, or is not allowed to the lecture because he was late. We don't have a right to do this; pupils or students are centre of attention, we are only here to help them realize themselves.

Our robotics project started with our son. He was 12 at that time, and he was interested in robotics, but we saw there was not enough information for him. First, he started a blog, then we decided to make a Russian-language catalogue of the classes in robotics. Gradually our home project became a portal with a large number of services for teachers, parents, children, and event organizers and also with a huge amount of expert, analytic, and news content from all over Russia and world. Since 2014, my husband joined our project, now he is managing it fulltime and I am only involved part-time. Our experience in IT, engineering, and education helped us a lot; we don't do light journalism but narrow-focused media. This project is a great opportunity to share what you love and what you are good at.

Recreational Robotics is not made especially for Perm, we write for the whole Russian community. Experience tells us that you can easily do beautiful things here, too, both nationally and internationally.

Digital Humanities is completely interdisciplinary and international thing. NRU HSE-Perm is one of four branches connected together. Staying in Perm you can feel yourself a man of the world. We can and must make our city better. Yes, these changes might be local but it is where everything starts.