Moldovan teachers are going digital: “Our students deserve education for the future”

In a sunlit Chisinau classroom at Petru Zadnipru Lyceum, the students are buzzing like bees. Tomorrow is the last day of the school year. Backpacks are ready to be tossed aside, and summer is around the corner. How do you hold the attention of teenagers when their minds are already on vacation?

For the 7th grade English teacher, Natalia Terente, the answer is to embrace digital distractions instead of fighting them. Most Moldovan schools still use old teaching methods and a green board and chalk. Phones are banned, teachers disapprove of technology. But here, the smartboard on the wall projects questions about holiday plans. A debate about camping equipment breaks out in English.

"No phone?" Terente jokes.

Natalia Terente, an English teacher, guides her 7th-grade English class through a digital exercise. Photo: Iurie Gandrabura

Before the energy dips, she projects a QR code onto the board, inviting the class into a Google Classroom’s virtual escape room, where the students must complete the sentences using the correct options provided. The room falls into a focused hush. Students whisper in pairs, deciphering English clues to unlock the next level.

Scanning a QR code on the smartboard, students enter a virtual “game”, working in pairs to decipher clues on their phones. Photo: Iurie Gandrabura

"Yes, they are obsessed with phones," Terente says. "But when you explain what we are using the phone for, it serves as a powerful tool. We teach them how to collaborate on a design project in Canva, or how to operate an AI in our favor instead of just copy-pasting. It is an integration of our reality.”

Terente designed these interactive lessons as part of the practical Digital Accelerator program she attended in spring this year. Supported by the Estonian Centre for International Development (ESTDEV) and UNICEF, this educational incubator brought together 60 teachers, principals and IT specialists from 12 schools across Moldova. 

Guided by mentors, the teams researched their own schools, collected data, and designed practical solutions. Something that would move the needle and inspire their colleagues to adapt new ways of teaching. So that the change would come from the teachers.

In Florești district, for example, educators started explaining to their colleagues how to use one new digital tool every staff meeting and called it the "Digital Pill". They then spend the week testing it in classrooms, and the following meeting reviews the results.

"Our approach was to act as a catalyst," Mart Laanpere, a Tallinn University professor of educational technology and the main consultant for the program explains. "We realized there was a need for a showcase of best practices. We decided to work with these 12 pilot schools, offering them massive support, guidance through mentors, and the opportunity to learn together as a community." 

The Moldovan mentors traveled to Estonia for a study visit. 

Over 10,000 teachers are digitally trained 

"It all started with a meeting between the Estonian and Moldovan education ministers and a small project," explains Birgit Rosenberg, Project Manager at ESTDEV. Now, years later, it has turned into a complete system designed to advance teachers’ digital skills in Moldova.

Rosenberg notes that over 10,000 teachers - a third of all educators in the country - have already received specialized digital training. She points to the Digital Accelerator as an illustration of this shift. "It's a great example of how to reform and bring changes to a traditionally conservative school system. This model can be applied far beyond just digital skills."

The transformation at "Petru Zadnipru" and the other schools is built on the three level DigiProf program that upgrades teachers' digital skills, aligned with the European digital competence framework.

Birgit Rosenberg from ESTDEV (left) and Tudor Lapp, a mentor at the Digital Accelerator program (center), agree that true digital transformation in schools is about changing the mindset. Photo: Iurie Gandrabura 

Mart Laanpere, lead consultant from Tallinn University, knows that a simple copy-paste from one country to another never works. The change must be customized and come from within. Photo: Iurie Gandrabura

Over 90% of Moldovan schools have internet

Surprisingly or not, the main educational barrier in Moldova isn't a lack of infrastructure. Angela Prisacaru, Deputy Head of the General Directorate for Policies in General Education at the Ministry of Education and Research, notes that the digital transformation means a profound change in mentality, leadership, and pedagogical practice. “And the Digital Accelerator program was exactly this catalyst," Prisacaru says.

Over 90% of Moldovan schools have internet connectivity, and around every fifth school has interactive smartboards like the ones at "Petru Zadnipru".

Tudor Lapp, a lead mentor at the Digital Accelerator program, agrees. "Moldova has some of the highest internet speeds in Europe, interactive panels, and digital labs." But, he adds, when technology is dumped into a school without a systemic pedagogical approach, overwhelmed teachers simply ignore it. 

"We have a serious phenomenon in Moldova of resistance to innovation," he admits.

“What we need is the competence to prepare students for life,“ a digital mentor, Tudor Lapp warns. Photo: Iurie Gandrabura

Innovation at the grassroots level

Back at "Petru Zadnipru" Lyceum, one floor up, you enter the 11th-grade classroom, where Maria Chistol, the deputy principal for education and an English teacher herself, is wrapping up her final English lesson with the high schoolers. Chistol watches her students closely, reading the room to see what works. "I always like to ask them for feedback,” she says. “They choose the tools they want to use”. With platforms like Wayground, it introduces a gaming element for quick checks, but it can also be used as a serious test. 

“For me, it’s a massive help because I get instant data on what they’ve understood without spending hours grading papers by hand,” Chistol said.

English teacher Maria Chistol uses digital tools like Wayground and Google Forms to turn standard assessments into interactive challenges. Photo: Iurie Gandrabura

She notes that 32 teachers in her school underwent the initial digital training DigiProf, with 24 pushing through to the advanced level, where they had to prove they were applying digital tools in actual lessons.

For Chistol, the payoff was immediate. "We are talking about children who spend a lot of time in front of screens. When they come here, they expect to learn in exactly the same way."

The program forced teachers out of their isolation. Terente ended up becoming a trainer for her own colleagues, running workshops on how to build digital portfolios and interactive quizzes. 

"Becoming a digital school does not mean buying equipment," Terente says. "It means changing the way we collaborate, we learn, and the way we make decisions together."

Terente reflects that the digital program taught the teachers to learn from each other and collaborate, “which is often a problem in our society,” she added.

Maria Chistol, deputy principal for education at "Petru Zadnipru" Lycem, notes that today's teenagers expect to learn digitally. Photo: Iurie Gandrabura

The Ministry and its partners plan to expand the Digital Accelerator nationally and certify over 19,000 teachers through DigiProf by the end of the year. 

After the final bell

Down the lyceum’s hall, the corridor erupts with the loud, joyful voices of high schoolers pouring out of the classrooms. Tomorrow’s the last day of spring that marks the ‘final bell’. They will scatter to summer camps, grandparents' villages, and the seaside. And when they return in the fall, they will find their teachers speaking their digital language a little more fluently, because, as Natalia Terente puts it, ‘they deserve an education prepared for a digital future."

Author: Patricia Mihaila