The authors of the papers presented in five chapters of Volume 1 Issue 2 have tried to find the answers to several current questions and showed some more important trends in the research on e-learning, that is – developing more adequate ICT tools and their effective use in education, educational intelligent systems,
information and communication competencies in higher education, networking and developing of the educational IT space, formal and informal education based on ICT and e-learning.

The article describes some preliminary results of the implementation of Work Package 4 (WP4) “Selection and testing new ICT tools” within a framework of the international research network IRNet and researchers from partner institutions from Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine and Australia. These results concern analyzing and studying some categories of ICT tools for making didactic videos. The whole package period was divided into several main stages 1-5. The role of multimedia in teaching is considerable since they offer various information presentation formats simultaneously. The advantage of combining text, audio, images, animation, video and hyperlinks lies in the use of both main channels - visual and verbal - for making didactic videos in an efficient way. Features of an effective presentation and examples of computer programs which may be used for this purpose have also been shown in the paper. The authors presented a ranking list based on the quality and quantity assessment of choosing ICT tools, proposed some recommendations of features of good didactic videos and analyzed some mistakes users make most frequently while elaborating didactic videos.

The article summarizes the results of the pilot study on the implementation of the model of information and communication competencies of the university teaching staff that was conducted at Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, Ukraine, and describes the basic stages of the research and the conditions of an effective implementation of the model. The article examines ways of improving the quality of higher education in Ukraine in the context of European quality standards for university educational space. The European standards and guidelines are considered in relation to internal quality assurance. The author examines the model of ICT competencies of teaching and research stuff and describes structural components of this model: motivational target component, organizational and procedural com- ponent, contents and operational and technological component, diagnostic and effective components. The article suggests tools to measure the level of educators’ formation in the ICT competence of teaching and research stuff. The tools are considered in accordance with the form activities of teaching and research stuff. The tools are formed in accordance with the recommendations of UNESCO Stand­ards and Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area, namely: understanding and awareness of the role of ICT in education, and basic use of ICT tools.

In the information society, the existing traditional ways of communication are changing, often in favour of digital forms. What is also transformed are the forms of teaching and educating, which are substituted by distance education with the use of networks of various types. The study focuses on the theoretical and practical determinants of network functioning. In this study, some e-challenges are analysed in the context of new prospects of the informational-educational space based on the global network of Internet. The  definitions are presented as well as some exemplary types of network. Moreover, the collaboration and self-training network, and its aims are focused on. Two cases are provided as examples – the Internet platform
“Doskonalenie w sieci /Improvement in the Net/” and the international research network IRNet, in the activity of which the authors of the presented article take active part.

The article deals with the modern approaches to the use of information and
communication technologies in the educational process, extracurricular activities
and management at the regional level in order to enhance the creative potential of
students, teachers and administrators. The article has described the conceptual bases
of creating an information-educational environment of the region as a platform for
information and achievement exchange between educators and the administration
of the region. It specifies the technology of implementing the content and technology
component of the information-educational environment of the region and
its main functional components. We suggest the implementation model of the
effective management of educational institutions in the form of a unified system for
collecting, processing and storing valid statistical and operational information on
the activities of pre-school, comprehensive educational institutions and territorial
units of education management (in districts and cities). The article has described
the integrated tools and technologies that are designed to ensure the educational
needs of both students and teachers. We also suggest the model of a single control
center for the information-educational environment of the region that organizes
support for its exploitation and development.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the focus of education on creativity
achieved by the use of coding (“code to learn”), in view of modern pedagogical
theories. Social interactions between young creators are an important factor. The
paper describes an initial stage of the research on the phenomenon of the remix
of simple computer games created by the community of users in the Scratch
environment. It presents selected problems of young creators connected to sharing
their own work with other community members: authorship acknowledgement,
formal acknowledgement for the first author placed on derived products (games),
reactions of the first author to the creative development of their ideas or influence
of school grades on the will to share the project. There will be further research
on the achievements of the same group of students aged 15 to 16 after a series of
lessons concerning creating computer games in the Scratch environment.

a transition to a new humanistic paradigm of education as well as the results
of the PISA 2012 study “Creative Problem Solving.” Contradictions between
traditional skills and 21st century competencies of a school graduate are analyzed.
The article also discusses contradictions between social needs of a person with
a highly developed intellectual, spiritual and moral potential, and an insufficient
development of theoretical and methodological bases of the student’s key competence
development, as well as between the traditional methods of computer
science teaching and the necessity to solve problems during the educational process
supported by the use of ICT. The results of the application of ICT teaching methods
based on the principles of humane pedagogy are presented, and their effectiveness
is confirmed.

This article, prepared by an international team of authors – researchers from different scientific areas, connected with ICT, e-learning, pedagogy, and other related disciplines – focuses on the objectives and some results of the IRNet international project. In particular, this article describes the research tools, methods
and some procedures of the WP3 “Analyses and Evaluation of the ICT Level, E-learning and Intercultural Development in Every Participating Country”: Objectives, Tasks, Deliverables, and implementation of research trips. Except that, the article presents more important events, such as (video)conferences, seminars,
workshops, an e-round table debate; among these events are ICTE2014, DLCC2014, “New Educational Strategies in Modern Information Space,” “Hightech information educational environment,” during which some more important results of the project research were presented. The list of publications includes
32 papers and a manuscript with WP3 results. Researchers from Poland, Russia, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Spain, Slovakia, Portugal, Czech Republic and Australia analysed the results of WP3 in the context of the next stages and Work packages of IRNet project – International Research Network.