PROJECT AND RESEARCH ACTIVITIES OF RURAL SCHOOLS AS A FACTOR IN THE FORMATION OF INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE IN THE FORMAT OF INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

The article examines the experience of implementing international educational telecommunication language projects «Friendship Bridge (Pont de l'amitié) Russia – France» and «Friendship Bridge (Lilian and Abraham Memorial Academy) Russia – Africa», organized in a remote format by Ogarkovo Secondary School named after M. G. Lobytov of the Vologda Municipal District of the Vologda region, which has the status of the innovative state platform. International educational telecommunications language projects act as tools for modernizing the educational process, ensuring the implementation of a personal-oriented paradigm of education. Several individual educational and research projects of students related to country studies, local history topics are also presented. Participation in projects with the help of specialized information and educational environment created, based on means of information exchange at a distance, makes it possible for students to perceive a foreign language not just as a school subject, but as a means of real communication, a means of obtaining information, free conversation at a distance with a friend, acquaintance with the cultures of other countries. They gain selfconfidence, experience positive emotions from the opportunity to use the latest achievements of modern technology and information resources. At the same time, the role of the teacher in the new information environment remains leading. It is shown that the experience of international cooperation is the basis for the formation of the intercultural competence and tolerant consciousness. And it is clear from our experience, design and research activities contribute to the development of critical thinking, increased interest in the study of foreign languages, awareness of the need to engage in selfeducation, the formation of skills to design knowledge independently, predict, navigate in the information space, see the possible consequences of different solutions. The inclusion of schoolchildren in active creative, independent activities based on project research is one of the ways to form the skills to conduct scientific search and develop their research abilities. Students, having mastered new educational technologies, more widely disclose their potential for communicative foreign-language development as a subject in mastering a foreign language.