The educational process increasingly shifts towards the use of digital technologies every year. The change refers to all forms of education, namely primary, secondary, and higher. Hence, the possibility of interaction between higher and primary schools in the new conditions is of interest nowadays. The research paper aimed to assess the effect of teaching on creative thinking in future teachers and primary schoolchildren. To this end, 28 students have been invited to teach the introduction to programming course within their internship to develop primary schoolchildren's creative thinking. The children were divided into two groups. The control group studied in the classroom, while the experimental one learned remotely via videoconferencing. Participants in both groups showed good, high, and very high levels of mastery of the course, which confirmed both approaches' suitability for effective learning. In evaluating the effectiveness of game-based programming instruction in person and remotely with trainees, it was found that the control (offline learning) group had a slight advantage in the final mean score. Meanwhile, the highest score was observed in the experimental group ([alpha] = 0.05 and the calculated value X[superscript 2] = 8.04). At the same time, the given hypothesis of the trainees' improved creative thinking as a result of teaching the course was confirmed - the average score before the test was 65.3 vs. 89 after the test (the calculated value of Student's t-test is 4.89 with a critical value of 2.26). The present findings are equally useful for university teachers/student teachers and school teachers/administration. They can serve as a thematic basis for further research on the interaction between different levels of education and the introduction of digital technologies in the educational process.