INFORMATIZATION AND DIGITALIZATION OF SOCIETY IN THE 21ST CENTURY: NEW CHALLENGES FOR INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

This article examines the processes of informatization and digitalization of education at the
beginning of the XXI century, associated with informatization and digitalization of social processes. The
beginning of informatization of society was in the 1970s. In the last few years, this process became global.
It has affected not only the developed countries of the world community, but also many countries that are
developing.
In the information society, knowledge and information resources are the objects and results of work of the
majority of the employed population. The reasons for the informatization of all spheres of human activity,
including education, are the following:
- The increasing role of intellectual work, focused on the use of information on a global scale;
- rapid aging of knowledge, the need for its constant updating; for the first time in the history of civilization,
generations of ideas and products of human activity are changing one another more quickly than generations
of people.
Informatization of education should be seen not just as the use of computers and other electronic devices
in teaching, but as a new approach to the organization of learning, as a strain in the pedagogical sciences.
The use of information technology (IT), communication technology (CT), and now digital technology (DT)
in the educational process changes the teacher's function from informational to managerial. The teacher is 

now a consultant, facilitator, and coordinator of instruction. The purpose of informatization is to prepare
students for full and effective participation in social, professional and everyday activities in an
informational society.
Nowadays the term "digital technologies" is used more and more often. The word "digital transformation"
is being used more and more often. We believe that digital technologies, which are actively developing in
the world, will soon overturn our idea of the possibilities of IT. What kind of technology is considered
digital? These are: Internet of Things (IoT); Augmented Reality (AR); Virtual Reality (VR); Machine
Learning (ML); Artificial Intelligence (Al); robotics, 3D-design. The most promising in the digital
transformation of modernity is the possibility of using all of these technologies together due to their
synergy.