Friday, 17 July 2020
Tuesday, 7 July 2020
Chess Trainer Professional Continuous Education & Development
https://trainers.fide.com/2020/07/07/professional-education-development-workshops-for-trainers/
We are proud of this very important initiative as we at the FIDE Trainers Commission move from just the certification, award and licensing of trainer titles, based on chess alone, to incorporating essential non chess skills such as teaching, and ultimately a universally recognised profession .
Like everything else today, chess is also subject to huge, even fundamental changes in how things work and are done, and the move online together with all that entails as necessitated by the current global COVID-19 global pandemic, is for many, a wake up call.
In chess, the impact of computers, databases, the Internet and engines, and now AI has been a constant game changer and so we have decided to start of with a series of workshops to help trainers (and players) learn or better learn how to use the tools that are now an essential part of the game.
Friday, 5 June 2020
Organising Eight (8) FIDE Trainer Seminars in Three Months
Since April, the FIDE Trainers Commission has been organising online seminars, bringing much needed training and certification to trainers worldwide by targeting different regions and looking to accommodate different languages.
First was Europe from 3-5 April, then East Asia and Oceania 24-26 April followed by German language 1-3 May, Spanish Americas 22-4 May, and then both North America and Indian Sub-Continent 29-31 May.
Tomorrow starts ECU English 5-7 June.
Tomorrow starts ECU English 5-7 June.
We have, as today, in the seven seminars to date, a total 318 participants from as many as 61 countries, averaging 45 each seminar!
These seminars have collectively been facilitated by 21 lecturers, and in order of appearance, they are: Thomas Luther, Artur Yusupov, Vishal Sareen, Ramesh RB, Mykhaylo Oleksiyenko, Eugene Torre, Jayson Gonzales, Jacob Aagaard, Xie Jun, Yu Shaoteng, Uwe Boensch, Alonso Zapata, Pep Suarez, Meiliset Khachiyan, Gregory Kaidanov, John Donaldson, Dejan Bojkov, Ivan Sokolov, Sagar Shah, Alexander Motylev and Jesper Hall.
Germany, India, Russia, Philippines, Scotland, China, Colombia, Spain, USA, Bulgaria, Netherlands, and Sweden!
Once ECU English ends we can look forward to Russian language 26-28 June when we will have a new lecturer added to our illustrious roll of honour when Victor Bologan from Moldova makes his debut.
Sunday, 10 May 2020
Interview on ChessBase India - The Vision of the FIDE Trainers Commission
By Peter Long
Today's FIDE Trainers Commission is very different from what was
seen for over a decade.
What we have now - even though still a work in progress - is the
implementation of the reform vision of FIDE Senior Trainer and Grandmaster
Jacob Aagaard who was appointed the new FIDE Trainers Commission Chairman
following the election of Arkady Dvorkovich as FIDE President at the FIDE
Congress held concurrently with the Batumi Olympiad in 2018.
It took us several months in the transition period to get on top
of the issues but then it became very clear what was needed.
1. First, the FIDE Trainers Commission never really evolved from
the necessary first stage of the first few years which was to identify and
certify leading trainers and to award them the appropriate trainer titles to
build a base and credibility.
2. Second was that instead of helping develop the skills of
trainers attending seminars, what happened and actually took place was a
largely abbreviated training for a player cramped into a very few days, and
from that, largely based on playing strength, a title was awarded.
3. Thirdly, it was easier to create value for titles and
licences by having the previous FIDE administration impose a licensing system
where it was a requirement in order to take a captaincy or coaching role at
official FIDE events.
4. Fourthly is that while on paper there were many FIDE
Academies, in reality there was no real criteria to be awarded this status and
there was no program other than giving the right to use the FIDE logo and to be
able to enter players in official FIDE events.
5. Fifth was that there was no renewal of the core FIDE Trainers
Council membership, much became a mantra that FIDE was the only way, and too
much resources were put into duplicating what was already created commercially
and easily available
Last year, 2019, the FIDE Trainers Commission organised 38
seminars and tried to be in every part of the world and in as many languages as
was possible and we enjoyed success stories in many places that had not seen
our activity for many years.
What was new was the gradual introduction in seminars of
teaching trainers through a wide variety of leading trainers. They shared what
had worked for them and the best methods and practices they knew off. At the
same time we made both the evaluation process and the final examination
relevant to what was being taught at the seminar and this was independently
marked by an examiner separate from the lecturers and then subject to review
through a verification process.
Jacob early understood how doing seminars online would be more
cost effective and give us greater reach but it also meant we could bring
together many trainers who were subject experts and it also allowed us to
ensure a certain level of quality in delivery and to document the teaching.
Moving to online sessions meant that more people could attend it
from across the globe and it was possible to have more high quality trainers
So we had planned to move most of our seminars online in 2020
and to run them ourselves or with partners on the ground which was a big change
from Federations applying for a seminar and where we were largely reduced to
merely facilitating and with little control over the delivery, and so, perhaps
more than anyone else in FIDE, with due respect to our fellow FIDE Commissions,
we were more ready when the global pandemic struck.
In two weeks we replaced seminars scheduled in Switzerland and
Sweden with our first online seminar and two weeks later we organised one for
East Asian and Oceania and one in German just finished successfully. And we are
committed to have a total of twenty seminars in all regions of the world and in
all the major languages by the end of 2020, and who knows, there might even be
more!
What I think you are seeing is that the FIDE Trainers Commission
is not anymore talking about one way only for training or that some trainers
are better than others because we have been assembling a team of lecturers who
on their own command huge respect, and even more importantly are giving the
FIDE Trainers Commission a gift of knowledge that they are happy to share with
our trainer colleagues who participate in our seminars.
This is a difficult time for the world, and of course chess is
not immune and since trainers are a part of the chess ecosystem which is
largely built around competitions, they too are also affected,
We have seen players who no longer have prizes and fees from
tournaments to live on become trainers almost overnight and we see trainers who
work mainly in schools and clubs unable to move the bulk of their students
online and it is a matter of time before parents see many of the benefits of
chess become the opposite as that of an addictive computer game.
I will be blunt here - the holiday period is over and money is
going to be a problem for all that are not in the top 1% - chess needs
tournaments and sponsorship to survive. What we are seeing online is not going
to generate the money needed, at least not in the short run and even in the
medium term, no matter how optimistic we want to be. The FIDE Trainers
Commission is doing our part by upgrading the skills of trainers and making this
as accessible and as cheaply as we can.
What worries me more in the long term is that we are in risk of
losing the many kids that come into the game every year and stay on. This is a
huge task for the FIDE leadership, and the FIDE Chess in Education Commission
led by FIDE Senior Trainer and Grandmaster Smbat Luptian, in my view, is going
to be responsible for the future of chess together with so many other capable
and passionate stakeholders who see chess as invaluable in the broader
education context! But we are not passing the buck as here too the FIDE
Trainers Commission can also perhaps help, by training chess players to teach
children, with our Developmental Instructors at the forefront and with National
Instructors becoming program facilitators and managers.
https://chessbase.in/…/FIDE-Trainers-seminar-for-Indian-sub…
Friday, 10 April 2020
Thursday, 12 March 2020
Monday, 2 March 2020
A Revamped Chess Asia
While I was in Europe I realised Chess Asia was down when seeing an empty screen with only the default WordPress theme desplayed without content.
I was also unable to log-in.
Numerous emails sent to the tech support of my hosting company over the next two weeks only got were polite and repetitive answers which at the end of the day meant they could do nothing except to reset my log-in.
My own investigation found a plug-in that mysteriously installed itself into a very standard WordPress and popular theme.
This plug was known to be malicious as on activation would wipe out the database and clearly that happened but as to who did it and how it could have happened, by the process of elimination, would indicate that it was clearly due to insufficient investment in security by the hosting company.
So, a change of hosting, and another couple of days spent setting up a new website.
Wednesday, 19 February 2020
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