Unleashing the potential of digital technologies for education

hello and welcome to this OSD webinar with me Duncan Crawford today we're discussing how to unleash the full potential of digital Technologies in the world of Education this is not just about buying more computers or tablets it's about much more than that it's about ensuring that education systems can reap the full benefits of digital Technologies which many countries are failing to do so at the moment so what needs to happen What policies need to be implemented to ensure there can be positive changes in classrooms in regard to digital Technologies well I'm glad to say a new oecd report is out today funded by the European Union which might just have a few of the answers it's called shaping digital education enabling factors for Quality equity and efficiency and it looks at what policies need to be implemented as a whole to ensure digital Tech can really have a positive impact act on learning and education I'm glad to say we have a great panel of guests today to join us for this discussion to look at some of the main findings of this report to discuss it first joining us is Axel Jean head of the support for digital Innovation and applied research office at France's Ministry for National Education and youth the oecd's director for education and skills Andrea Schleicher joins us as well Dragon a q press project manager at the Croatian academic and research Network carnet Chief expert at estonia's Education and Research Ministry hello helique and Antoinette angelova crystava director for Innovation digital education and international cooperation at the European commission thank you all so much for joining us here today we have got a lot to discuss so let's get right to it and start with antoinetta angle over Gustavo from the European commission he's going to outline what's happening at the European level regarding digital technology over to you thank you very much Duncan and Good afternoon to everyone it is indeed my great pleasure to join you at today's event on the launch of the oecds report on shaping digital education enabling factors for Quality equality and efficiency so this report is an excellent illustration of the close collaboration between our two institutions and indeed contributes a lot to the established links and cooperation that we have with the oecds education and skills directorate on one side and directorate general for Education youth culture and support of the commission on the other side it goes without saying that in any policy area we need robust data and evidence and oecd is known acknowledged and very much respected and appreciated for the work it is doing in this field as well as for the analysis it is producing and this is even more important for the digital education area which is still a relatively new field and there's still a lot of gaps to be filled so while we are very interested and glad to see uh the increased interest to this area and we do acknowledge it's high importance we also must acknowledge that we don't have yet comprehensive up-to-date and internationally comparable data on many elements of the digital education ecosystem for example we don't know yet how much uh we the digital Technologies are used what is the provision of digital Technologies and how they are applied in teaching and learning and one of the factors for this is indeed the lack of systems or mechanisms to monitor the digital infrastructure of the educational institutions therefore it is indeed important to work together on developing evidence to help us develop more effective policies and measures to support our Educators and Learners and to even further unleash the potential of digital Technologies so the ongoing digital transformation of our society and economy calls for Education and Training Systems which can adapt and respond to new and evolving learning needs but to master the digital transition we definitely need digital skills and competencies at your level we have set our Ambitions high and this means that by 2030 we want to raise the number of adults with basic digital skills to 80 percent we also want to raise the number of ICT professionals to 20 million while simultaneously attracting more women in this profession and we also want to reduce the share of 8th graders who underachieve in computer and information literacy to less than 15 percent so to achieve this you may know that on the side of the commission we have already put this together in a common Vision which allows and describes our objectives and Ambitions in the field of digital education we would like to achieve high quality inclusive and accessible digital education in Europe with a strong commitment to work together at all levels from the local to the National and International and the European commission has set out its Vision namely in the digital education action plan covering the period 2021 and 2027. and there are two strategic priorities that are defined in the action plan namely to Foster the development of a high performing digital education ecosystem and to develop digital skills and competencies for all so since the launch of the digital education action plan we have achieved a lot and we are well on track in implementing the individual actions but we are also aware that there is much more to be done and this has been also confirmed by the structure dialogue that we carried out together with the member states last year so the development of digital Technologies is constantly growing but it doesn't fully match the pace of reforms in our Education and Training Systems and we definitely to be more ambitious so to deliver on this ambitious the commission has put forward proposals for two Council recommendations one of them is looking at how to improve the provision of digital skills and competencies in Education and Training it proposes a strengthen and integrated more inclusive approach of developing digital skills at school vet and University level and it also recognizes the importance of teaching digital skills at an early age the other one looks at the enabling factors of successful digital education in particular The Proposal looks um at how to put in place the necessary infrastructure governance and capacity building and it sets out a blueprint for coherent framework to put all these elements together so what is also clear is that the education sector cannot achieve all these ambitious objectives alone it is clear that all sectors need to work together across the different policy areas and this is why the proposal for the council recommendation uh is putting forward and promoting the whole of government approach so the proposals are deeply rooted in robust research on digital education and we will hear more about it from addressing his presentation but they also benefit from the practices and Lessons Learned and what is implemented at National level by the member states so this comes as a direct result also of the extensive work we've carried out together with the member states last year under the structured dialogue which was focused on digital education and skills so right now we are continuing with the member states uh the discussions uh on these two uh Council proposals which are expected to be adopted by the end of the year uh this is of course a great opportunity to continue our joint efforts and to respond jointly to the challenges and needs related to the digital transformation we are of course uh confident that we are not alone in this endeavor we will continue working closely together with the Education and Training sector with national authorities and institutions we teach you and parent organizations with Learners and we do strongly believe that this collaboration will continue and further grow so today's event is indeed a wonderful event uh illustration and confirmation of our Collective commitment towards enabling successful digital education which is indeed featured by quality equity and efficiency as the oecd report suggests so I'm very grateful to oecd and all colleagues who have worked on the report but also to all colleagues who have organized today's event and I'm very much looking forward to the discussions and upcoming presentations thank you very much for your attention Antoinette angelovo costavo from the European commission there thank you so much for those opening remarks uh lots of interesting stuff for us to get into later on in the discussion but for now let's take a look at this new oecd report in a little bit more detail and turn to the oec's director for education and skills Andreas slicer who's going to outline the key findings to this report over to you Andreas thanks so much Duncan and antonetta has set the scene really perfectly for what you're going to see in this report let me just share my screen with you um you should be seeing it now uh basically we've been trying to achieve a comprehensive overview of what is happening in digital education the digital world opens amazing opportunities for Education it can make education more personal more granular more adaptive more more interactive while you study mathematics on the computer the computer can figure out how do you learn and then you respond to that which is a much more tailored offer education can become more effective more Equitable we can resources use resources better we can super Empower teachers as data analysts to actually understand how different students learn differently and then engage with that with differentiated uh educational practice system but the point is that none of this is an automaticity it really takes good public policy it really takes strategic design for you know better technology to translate in a better education practice in Better Learning outcomes technology is not a magic power it's just an amazing amplifier and an accelerator but it will amplify and accelerate good educational practice in the same way it amplifies poor educational practice the kind of AI based algorithms that are in play today can you know give teachers so much better information and then help them tailor instruction in new ways it can make them great coaches great mentors great facilitators at the same time you know you cannot make learning more scripted more passive more reactive so how we do on this really depends on public policies we try to identify their challenges but also look at promising practices that can help you know realize the potential of Education let's start you know with some of the bottlenecks as you can see from this chart when it comes to the availability of devices for instruction that's the technology the hardware you can see there's still a fair amount of work to do you can see on average across oecd countries you see about 60 percent of students are in schools whose principles say that you know the different the number of digital devices for instruction is sufficient by that means 40 do not agree with this and uh you have a number of countries here where this is much much lower or even equally important devices at the school are sufficiently powerful in terms of computing capacities also there you can say it is the case in many countries but by far not in all or the availability of adequate software is sufficient also there we can see quite significant gaps so basically what this shows as the the first digital device is still present and that doesn't even include the second and third digital device and antonietta actually alluded to do students have the capacities to teach yourself the capacities so this is you know the starting point creating a More Level Playing Field ensuring that technology enhances Equity it doesn't you know expose new inequalities what's also interesting that even where technology isn't playing classrooms uh it doesn't always lead to Better Learning outcomes you know what you can see here in most countries teacher-led users you know teachers using PowerPoint teachers using you know devices in front basically is typically associated with Better Learning outcomes so that's not so difficult to understand you know obviously when you're using a great presentation devices as a teacher you can actually show things much better but what is more troubling is that that is not true when it comes to student black uses we can see the significant potential here so why would you listen to a teacher explaining to you the result of a scientific experiment where you can do that experiment nowadays in a virtual laboratory but you know whether it comes to you know internet searches or you know you know again based learning all of that we see often that the intensity of their users negatively related to learning up outcomes and that really shows that uh you know if we just use technology to conserve existing pedagogical practice or probably achieve worse outcomes now the key really is to use technology to transform educational practice and there's a range of policy levers that we can deploy for that when you ask you know teachers School leaders what are the difficulties versus they say well you know curricula and assessment are still in the in the paper-based stage we teach you know students to learn answers rather than to teach them to ask the right questions and so on now there is insufficient time there is insufficient maybe incentive for educators to get really deeply involved no and there you can see the pandemic was kind of massive accelerator in this people had no choice and suddenly actually most teachers turn out to be quite capable in this now but there's cleared so lack of capacity for for digital education no pedagogies new kind of teachers are not always creative designers of innovative learning environments that are Tech enabled as you could consider as caps in digital devices connectivity money always an issue and then you know technology brings a range of risks you know from cyber bullying to you know a bias kind of approaches to learning lots of things so what this report actually does it puts these things in order as it looks at the kind of solutions that we need to look at curricula and assessment you can look at Greece sets for some years now invested in redesigning reimagining its curriculum putting digital education not on top of the curriculum but really making it the heart and uh in a very very interesting effort digital infrastructure now you look at Uruguay plan say well basically ensuring that everyone has access to the basic infrastructure and or you look at you know the regulatory environment how do we reconcile you know the free flow of Digital Data with at the same time you know confidentiality and personal security you can look at the UK providing a data protection toolkit for schools or capacity building France's reference Frameworks for teachers digital competencies spelling out you know what it is that teachers need to acquire and how to support them money no in Germany the digital school pact has you know provided a significant level of resources or you know to address some of the bottleneck in digital provision and then Human Resources policies and you can look at the creation considering teachers efforts on digital pedagogies uh how they fit into a career progress so that really good answers to those challenges and we have compiled them in this report that's really a very very important kind of dimension of that but you know we need more than that we need clear and coherent strategies that pull those policies uh together and the range of you know strategies at this report displays let's let me just pick a few first of all it's about building a vision for a digital education giving people an image of what is possible and how can we attain that you can look at Japan that has put you know quite comprehensive Vision together in on the use of artificial intelligence and blockchain Technologies and education you can look at a more concrete kind of action plan in Colombia and in Lithuania where there are very clear kind of time-bound goals to ensure that the strategy actually happens is implemented that we don't lose sight of what is important there are you know funding mechanisms that's always you know digital in Investments cost time cost money we need to make space for that make funding available on a predictable basis so that people trust those kinds of developments and there you can look to Germany Spain and last but not least the toughest area is who is responsible for what and how and here this lower Republic has done really well in delanaging responsibilities between you know what's done at the center and what's done at the front so those kinds of strategic functions are really really important if you do not know where you want to go it's very hard to to get there what is also clear however that the far from all countries have a strategic vision for a digital education you can see from the server countries that we surveyed you know less than half have it actually a specific digital strategy for Education some countries include digital provision and a kind of broader strategy but there's also a range of countries 16 but actually have no strategy yet so it's a lot of work to do to build coherence but the report provides good guidance good models for how this can be done and last but not least you know digital education is always a means not the end we need to ensure that we track investments in digital education policy that we monitor the state of digital uh education and that is about the hardware that's about you know the policies the practices the pedagogies how this evolves at digital education comes to its uh it's a full needs the Flemish community of Belgium is a great example every five years they take stock of where they are survey the people at the front line you know this is not about the devices coming from the top it's really about how is this going to be deployed how is it used you can see actually good example there how this has been done and last but not least no learn more about the outcomes of this how do digitalization improve quality how does it improve equity and how it helps us to achieve more with less resources thank you very much thank you so much for that presentation Andreas absolutely fascinating stuff and we're going to dig down into a lot of that information in a moment with our panelists first though uh before we do thanks to all of you who are joining this webinar uh people joining from Florida Brazil Hobart in Tasmania that may be a first uh Melton mowbray in the UK Slovakia California many many other countries and uh cities all right around the world to so thank you to all of you for watching and please do get involved if you have a question for Andreas or any other member of the panel then please use the Q a function at the bottom of your Zoom feed alternatively if you're watching via Facebook you can also send us a question via Facebook as well now though let's get to it and let's get stuck in to uh the discussion uh should we start with I think uh Axel Jean uh head of the digital Innovation and applied research support office at France's national education and youth ministry uh thank you so much for joining us Andreas has just outlined some of the policies needed to make a difference what is France doing specifically to try to unleash the full potential of digital Technologies thank you very much I'm so glad to be with you today so thank you very much for the invitation and sorry for my English if I miss some points sometimes so what we are doing now in France is we are dealing with Innovation and education at the Earth of possible transformation uh for the whole society and obviously for Education uh what has been said before is um correctly aligned with what we did because obviously there is a strong National and international activity around innovation in education and what we did in France was aligned with the digital education action plan committed by the European uh commission so for from coming from Europe what is called Deep digital education action plan and what we did in France we have defined a digital strategy for Education as it has been said before quite like in a lot of countries and or digital strategy is aligned with the digital education action plan coming from Europe and what we did everyone has seen that digital education was very important but since last November something occurred coming from the generative artificial intelligence capacity so we deal with that and we add we have a digital um strategy specified for artificial intelligence because we think that it can change quite a lot of things in order to teach and in order to learn so there is a lot of issues to consider the one really evident other one from educational point of view but there is issue coming from societal legal ethical technological economic so it's quite important to make everything work all together and it's important for us to build a framework of trust just respect uh democratic theory issues based on ethical and legal expectation scientific and centered um and Sanctuary on teachers and students for a point of view everything has to be considered and what director is a very um strict with that everything has to be considered with the user teacher and you don't always in the loop at the center of all of our considerations so when we decide something we have to decide to think is is it useful for the teacher in order they teach to the student and will it be useful for the students in order they learn something better using digital technology instead of do not using this kind of technology so everything is considered in these points and we've got uh for um four main areas that we consider till 20 uh 27. the first one is an ecosystem committed to a shared a public policy so we make work all together for example the laboratory the for the research part the Ed Tech coming from the company uh the the common digital coming from free Society obviously the teachers and the parents the second point is to define a digital education that develop systemically um which is specifically intended to have um competencies around citizenship and digital skills so we all have different curricula but the center of the of the subject is to make some citizens that uh we that have um who are sorry critical mind and to do so we need to address this question with digital technology in school because if we do not do that we know that companies address constantly the young students for example with ie technology and there is a digital literacy that we need to address specifically in school so there is a very um we know that there is a lot of transformation occurring because probably we are living a digital Revolution because of what I can do that means that we need a lot of training session for our teachers and for the student obviously but we need to start with the trainers of teachers with the inspector and with the teacher probably it's a huge effort that we need to do about the training of the teachers but really huge much more than before and the main point is to have um to develop the the competencies to have some critical mind uh okay for the student so that they are real citizens so to have the good citizenship we need them to be critical about the use of digital technology and that has to be addressed at school the third point for us is an education community supported by a sustainable and inclusive digital offering so the digital offering come from two parts the one developed by the edtech under the control of the policy makers and the second part is coming from the free Society to in order to have the common digital shared by all the teacher and then shared by the student so we we used to say that we love to work on two on both for legs one coming from the text and one coming from the free society and the the common digital developed by the initiative of teachers for example and the last point is that we need the new Grant rules for an information system at the service of its users so when we have a technology or digital technology we have like a trainer triangle coming from the school working with research laboratory and working with ethics and common digital development with this triangle we think that we've got the the best way in order to have some Innovative Digital Services and obviously this triangle need to be regulated by the policy makers so we make them working all together because without research laboratory we do not stay in science and we need to stay only in science and not in magical development we need to work with the ethics because they know how to go to upscale and to go to to succeed in scaling up the development of a good prototype and everything has to be considered keeping always the teachers in the loop so let's keep for us a lot of changes to to succeed in but the the best challenge and the very first challenge is to train a lot of teachers so that they can succeed with digital technology in their classroom it has been said before in the in one of the slides in France um as we need to check and to add the detail in order to to scale up their competent digital competencies we have developed a product called pix which I test the level of the competencies of the teachers and of the students so we've got a Services which is used if I do not miss this point with a colleague from Belgium and and this pix system is a is an incapacity for us for the teacher to check their level to level up with this level and for the children to say okay when you are in a secondary school or at University you are this level of digital um competencies and we are very aware of the the point concerning the major information literacy because this point is not um is not linked only with mathematics or with French for example but the median information literacy is one condition in order to stay in citizenship in Democratic countries and we think that with a very very fair and very difficult point that has to be addressed only in in our school because if we do not do it in school with with the media literacy we will miss a very clear point and we will have some very huge difficulties in a very short time so it's a only introduction and uh and I will be pleased to answer the questions thank you Axel that's really fascinating just a very very quick follow-up to all that because you mentioned the importance of teachers being on board with all these changes what's the reaction when you speak to teach them for in France are they largely in favor or against these changes proposed changes to their working practices um to be honest I think um I think it's uh it's mitigated some of the pioneer user uh just use them for example 20 of the teacher would use it uh with use digital technology because they they find it very very useful for example to have a much more inclusive school and we know that digital technology are quite useful in order to to have a much more inclusive school for the special needs students but it's probably not the good um the good way of thinking about that it's not what the teacher want to do it's a question of democracy and if we do not train our teachers uh with this point um we will miss some things that is a thing which is huge we uh some of us are thinking that we are leading a revolution in this real Revolution at this time so our point is to train the teacher and they have to be trained it's not a question of um volunteer to do it it has to be done because if we do not train a teacher we will meet something very huge so at this time when we are not in a flat area and we are leaving something with a lot of transformation the point is that we need to train or trainers or aspector and our teacher and at this time I think in our time actually the teachers would do not want to deal with digital technology we'll just miss the world as it is and the point of a teacher is to to train the students so that they can work and they can live and they can change the world where they live thank you so much for that so Jean from France's uh even National Education and youth let's turn to Croatia get a perspective from there with dragana cupres the project manager at the Croatian academic research Network Carnet thank you so much for joining us um what's happening in Croatia to prepare young people and teachers for that matter to engage and learn better through digital Technologies there are a number of initiatives taking place in Croatia Duncan as well as in most of the other countries in the world related to digital education but today I would like to just briefly introduce you just one of the services that we have developed during our eight years e-schools project we call it digital maturity service and um with that service we are trying actually to have a comprehensive overview of what's happening in the digital education on a national level to support the national government and National agencies in pinpointing the the Improvement areas areas needed Improvement or areas needed more support but we use this service also to support each individual school because each individual school can assess themselves against five different areas of digital education and on five levels of digital maturity and also the schools can ask for external evaluation the school can ask for external experts to come and visit the school and talk with the school team with teachers with Headmaster and also see what are the areas uh where practice is really comprehensive and supporting students and their learning goals and where the teachers and Headmasters things that they need more support so these that tool has given us incarnate and in Croatia a comprehensive overview how to plan and how to monitor our large-scale investments like e-schools in Croatia and we have been investing uh together with European commission for eight years now uh investing more than 200 millions of viewers with equipment but also a lot of Education and Training but Axel told about previously and I support his argument that it's very very important part of digital education but without going into too many too many details um just want to name that among these five areas of digital maturity only one dimension is related to infrastructure to network and Computing infrastructure and also to devices of teachers and students and classrooms and the four dimensions are related to people to their competences to how they use technology uh in a pedagogical only sound way to the leadership and management of Technology within schools and also the digital culture so yes of course we need to we need to um address the the digital divide in terms of equipment and infrastructure but also the digital divide in terms of digital competencies and this is uh where the the digital maturity comes into into play uh pinpointing the uh strategically weak points of points needed much more attention my microphone wasn't open there we go you can tell I'm a pro uh Dragonair Q press really interesting information there and I wonder you you mentioned that there's been a huge investment in digital infrastructure in Croatia um is that leading to better exam results Better Learning outcomes or is it too early to say it is definitely leading to more motivation of students and we know that a higher the motivation of students uh is related to uh achieving more learning goals so the influence is not direct and many research collaborates this this finding what also is extremely important and thank you for asking this question is for governments and for schools to have the independent research tracking all the Investments and all the initiatives and learning also from our mistakes and also from from our best practices thank you again for that Dragon a very interesting indeed and let's get a perspective from Estonia now uh hello chief expert at estonia's Education and Research Ministry and I'm interested in your perspective because Estonia obviously regularly named as a high flyer of Education systems because famously put digitalization at the heart of its system very early on um so part of that success I suppose depends on monitoring and evaluating how the digitalized program has been enacted and what is the perspective in Estonia has it worked well and if what hasn't worked well as well if you could give us an idea about that uh thank you and thank you for an invitation to introduce what we are doing in Estonia in Estonia the national curriculum in general education places emphasis on this development of digital competencies actually in 2014 digital competencies was introduced as one of eight key competencies in Estonia National curriculum with in Estonian education system we have to mention that the schools have an autonomy so that they can create their own School curriculum but it has to be based on the national curriculum and our teachers are also uh had this autonomy so they can choose their teaching methods and the teaching content so but they have to have the teaching so that the learning outcomes of Learners are matching the outcomes of national curriculum to facilitate this process for teachers to teach digital conferences we have developed the simple and clear digital competences models uh and this also eliminates the need to for every Estonian teachers to uh to independently create their own teaching materials allowing them to focus on supporting the Learners more the lures model includes assessment criteria that describes the knowledge the learners possessed by the end of the school level for this initial need for modeling and standardizing education digital competencies came with a renewal over our national qualification standard for teachers in 2017 this standard outline the ability to incorporate technology in designing the learning environments and teaching practices we also updated the version of this teacher's qualification standard in 2019 aligning the digital competencies of Educators with a new European Standard DD comp EDU as we monitored our digital competencies we use the digital page tool digital mirror and it has been used more than 18 percent of this Union Schools to monitor the digital maturity it was first used in 2016 and then again 2019 digital mirror as I said is a web page too that enables any school team to self-assess the digital maturity of their organization as a whole the tool also facilitates the planning of a whole school approach uh who School teaches a strategy as well as an aggregated strategy for schools in one city or in one District district and the pedagogical Innovation indicators in digital mirror are delivered from the Estonian National tragedy for lifelong learning nowadays we don't use the digital mirror anymore we use uh selfie for teachers so that teachers can evaluate their digital competencies by themselves and also our student education and Newport teaches of competencies working group has developed a tool for students so they can also assess their own digital competencies as yours before uh what we have learned from the monitoring or digital competencies we learned that uh it is crucial to have the support endorsement and encouragement from the school manager to build up these digital competencies of teachers and also the learners uh availability functionality and maintains of Technology plays a significant control and there has to be a shift in mindset recognizing that technology isn't mean to an end not an end call itself so thank you so much for that hello very interesting indeed I'm conscious that we haven't got that much time left and there are lots of questions coming in and I I should give a special thanks to uh Axel Jean from the Francis Ministry of Education and youth because he's busy answering away in the Q a chat function so uh good for him but here's a few questions now actually I I want to bring in um Andrea slicer from the oecd because uh Michael babore on the chat is asking in North America governments give little time and resources to supporting professional learning for teachers does the report suggest ways of addressing that yeah I think this is a very important issue and we have a limited data for the United States in comparison but it is indeed true that the teaching load of American teachers is particularly High that's been a consequence of relatively small class sizes so teachers in the United States have less time for other things than teaching and that includes professional development and that often leads to schools school districts just buying software Solutions rather than enabling teachers to become creative designers of those kinds of Technologies and that is the limitation what we clearly see across countries where teachers are not at the heart of the design of those kinds of tools they are usually not that effective in implementing them either so I think there is a clear limitation other countries that you know make different trade-offs used to teaching time differently and give teachers more time more resources for Designing developing and implementing technology-based Solutions are doing clearly better Estonia is a good example so is Singapore we're actually professional learning communities in every school bring teachers together to really get on top of this agenda sticking with the topic of teachers Andreas and if any other panelists are still there please turn your cameras on you can come in on this as well um Lord's gong calves asked in the chat um what about teachers who are already in schools how do you deal with teacher resistance to ideas for bringing in digitalization yeah and that's that's obviously the big issue you cannot address you know the needs in through initial teacher training alone because technology changes so quickly this is really about apps killing and reskilling in the teaching fast providing space time and support for teachers to continue to evolve as technology evolves and some countries do that really well they're sick ample time ample support that teachers get in others it's still a very kind of Novel experience so I I do believe making sufficient Investments and that also is not something that is a matter of training courses alone it's very much of a you know a high degree of professional autonomy and a collaborative culture in the education systems it helps teachers so long but very last point on this we should also not assume you can you know roll a kind of technology-based policy out to old schools at once like in every other areas you will have initially some innovators who are really really good at that to develop new tools then you know they're going to inspire you know a range of early adopters people who are actually willing to take a risk make mistakes learn from them invest the extra mile and actually making this work and then when you have that critical mass of people you can build an early majority of teachers you know who actually try things out at scale and when you have that then is the time to deal with the laggards you know people who are very reluctant resistant to change if you try to get you know to everyone Advanced at once you're unlikely to succeed Dragon I wonder if I can bring you in on that final point which Andreas just made and if you come up against uh similar situations where there is some resistance to some of the changes what you want to bring in in regards to digitalization but that it is a a gradual something which you have to do gradually I absolutely agree with Andreas it takes time we need to include time in the equation of harnessing all the potentials of the digital technology and we saw the we saw that in Croatia uh when we piloted our e-schools with 150 schools in back in 2016. it was uh

for many schools uh novel all institution uh approach however those 150 that was uh approximately 10 percent of schools those schools were better equipped and better uh prepared to meet the pandemic lockdown and this is uh especially because they have uh being trained and educated the teachers and they had time to experiment with technology to fail to try again and to build their their confidence and what what we also uh saw from the research is that uh where teachers are more com more digitally competent they are more confident and they uh by far have more positive attitudes to technology to how they can use the potentials of technology so this is also an equation raising digital complex allowing time for uh building the confidence and the knowledge and also allowing the the space for failing I know that it's not an easy thing to say uh especially for us for our parents we don't want to see our teachers fail in schools but this is how how both teachers and us you our children learn through trying failing and trying again from Estonia is education Research Ministry were teachers in Estonia given space to fail for a long period of time actually I could say that uh 20 of our general education teachers are taking these digital competence courses offered by our education and youth board every year so it's a it's a quite good percentage and I know that they are doing a very good job by evaluating these learning outcomes of the teacher training courses so that they could match the European Standard to the company their always monitoring are there some competencies like so we can create courses that support these learning outcomes for the digital competencies we lack right now um Axel Jean how important is monitoring for France um the power of data to assess whether digitalization policies are actually performing I presume it's very important yes thank you for this question if if I may I just want to react to what has been said by Andreas and um yes thank you very much um perhaps we should um the the perhaps the question is not only to to think about the resistance coming from the teacher to be very honest with you probably we are we have much more resistance coming from the policy makers or from the inspector or for the trainers of teacher before I think the point is not the difficulty with the teacher because the teacher are probably the one who loves to innovate from long time ago but the inspector and the one in charge of the authority of the teachers and the trainers of teachers they need to change their mind and we need to change our mind too because we need to deal with a lot of transformation so perhaps we need to to make the teacher feel much more confident in order to to change the way they practice with digital technology and uh and to succeed in that we need to train so that's why I need I didn't see so much on the training part of the of our teacher but uh I feel really confident about the teacher because they they always innovate and they innovate from a long time ago but we need some time to change the way of thinking uh coming from the inspector and the trainers of teacher first so it's it's not that it's easy and it has been said before it takes a longer a lot of time so we need times in order to train a teacher first and then to train the teachers and to help them and to make them much more confident I insist on that it has been discussed on the chat the point is not to look for the best practices I think we need to stop with that we need to help the teacher to find some good practices and good practices will be good enough for the student because best practices as you said when you when you see your best practices coming from a good teacher a very good teacher the the first point is that you said okay I'm not enabled to do that because it's best practices what you need is to address 80 of your teachers and to address them correctly to make them feel much more confident we only need to have good practices good practices is fair enough for us so I think it's something very important because we I think in a lot of in many Ministries we are always searching for the best practices and the best practices are good for the the one as Andrea said before the ones who innovate a lot um but are less than 20 percent of the the teacher so let be clear with that we only need good practices and it will be fair enough for the students and the teachers thanks so much for that to get an international perspective on what Axel uh just mentioned Andreas slice from the oecd um are some of those issues common across all those three countries or does it vary uh it varies a lot actually we can see some countries that are very tech savvy that have you know a teaching profession and as Excel said you know an education system that is very open to Innovation that has a Level Playing Field uh where actually uh you know startups small companies can actually play and I would actually say Estonia is a great example for that uh but there are other is as well if you go to Korea um Singapore there are a number of Education systems that have you know open up and are very Innovative and are also capable to scale Innovation I think that's the hardest part that we often have we have many really good examples across countries almost in any country you can find some really Innovative you know uses of Technology but education is not very good to look at what's to connect you know good ideas to you know connect Great Schools to build a strong teaching professional teachers actually work together across you know disciplines and schools and I think where that happens you have an amazing kind of playing field the pandemic was a great illustration you know those education systems were very quickly back on their feed teachers you know immediately and School uh schools immediately you know use those Technologies to create you know contingency plans and measures and I think it's a good sign the the resilience of the system thank you for that Andreas and thank you for the questions which have come in and sorry if we haven't got through all of them over the course of the webinar but thank you so much for do for taking part uh before we go I want to go around the houses just one final time uh to get a final sort of key takeaway from all of our panelists and what I'm wondering is what's the one big change that you'd like to see happen today or in the near future to ensure that digital Technologies support teachers in schools to provide Better Learning environments what's the the main thing you'd like people watching to consider changing and maybe start with uh hello from Estonia thank you I guess what we need as we discontinued using digital mirror in Estonia we need this monitoring tool would what would be long lasting and that we could have some longitude studies with that so we could more precisely see how our teacher trainings which Implement which also has some influence on our Learners digital competencies how we are working out and how we are going in the right direction this is what I think in Estonia we need a new uh monitoring tool what would last thank you hello very good indeed um let's turn to dragana cupres I see you there project manager at the creation academic and research Network Carnet uh what do you think what's the one big change that you'd like to see regarding digital Technologies to ensure they support Better Learning environments well Duncan we have seen a lot of changes in the in the past decades and in the last six months uh so many changes with disruptive AI Technologies what I would like to see more support for teachers in sustaining really a good balance between sound pedagogical learning and teaching and using technology adequately to support those pedagogical and learning goals we have seen a lot of investments in equipment equipping the schools and we also as a policy makers we should be aware that this is putting a lot of burden to schools to teachers and especially Headmasters shoulders and that we have to provide both technical support pedagogical support and instruction instruction support for teachers and for students in those schools we cannot expect that with the investment cycle buying equipment and infrastructure in schools that our job is done it's not done it is just beginning because the job of teachers is just beginning there so we have to think about the uh crossing the digital divide between uh those who are less and more digitally competent and also uh the digital divide in those schools who are maybe in rural areas who lack support uh that may be more advanced schools in more urban areas have and also think about something that is more and more and more on everyone's agenda this is the digital well-being of both students but also teachers this is something that we haven't taught enough I would say pre-pandemic but now we are thinking a lot about the digital addiction the mental and also physical health and how we should combine all the the important things that technology is bringing us in education but also have the sound approach to to mental and also physical health of our students and also uh I I'm just opening the four for cyber security issues and this is a huge area I don't want to go in there but this is something I'm sure we are all aware that we need to really work a lot together with our teachers there thank you so much Dragonair and look Andreas I'll uh hand over to you here what's the big change you'd like to see happen today regarding uh digital Technologies but uh maybe you want to mention cyber security as do I get a mentioned it no I actually think it's a need for greater openness of Education systems there are systems that are more open to Innovation to new ideas that look outward rather than look upward and and also you know this is not about tech companies taking over schools of education but it is about creating a new culture of you know Partnerships between you know the innovative ideas that often come from the private sector and you know creative development in the schools in service of the public good and schools you know are often very good to keep students inside and the rest of the world outside we need to call that are more open to new developments that are better at anticipating you know the evolution of scale demand and actually find creative responses to them thank you so much Andreas and axel Jean I'm not sure if you're still with us he is okay the final word goes to you over to you sir um well thank you very much the the point I think is uh to keep the technology for only a purpose of assistant service to teaching and training uh professional to web learning with better differentiation it has been said before and follow up and to propose a recommendation the decision the point is to use digital technology and to keep in mind that it's only one facet of teaching process which must be complemented by other practices so if if I need to resume that it's keep the humanity at the center and keep always the teacher in the loop for students even when you develop new Digital Services with a text or with other teachers I think if we think so we should success it will take times but we need to success thank you Axel and thank you to everyone for joining us today that is all we've got time for if you want to learn more about all the things we've been discussing today then please do go to the osc website you'll be able to find the report uh shaping digital education enabling factors for Quality equity and efficiency thank you to all our guests thank you to the production team led by Cassandra Morley who is certainly leaving the oecd next week and thanks to all of you who have watched and joined the webinar thank you so much for your questions I hope you enjoyed it please do join us again for another webinar soon all the best

2023-07-16 22:37

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