Presentation of UNESCO IITE Project on ICT in Primary Education

Between March 3 and 5 Dubai became the place of emergence of new ideas. A wide scope of topics, from e-learning to mobile health and renewable energy, was discussed at the Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University Congress - 2014. The Congress that was held on March 3-5, 2014 at the Atlantis, the Palm Hotel in Dubai hosted a dynamic audience of over 600 international innovators, policy-makers and scholars.

The Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University – the first Smart University in the UAE – seeks to advance the work of Arab innovators at their 2014 Conference “Leading Transformation to Sustainable Excellence”, an ambitious attempt to address some of the most pressing issues faced by the business, e-learning and traditional education fields around the world.

 The UNESCO IITE was invited to the Congress as a partner. Within the E-Learning Excellence Conference IITE has organized a Special Interest Group meeting on ICT in Primary Education. The project leader, Prof. Ivan Kalas (Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovak Republic) presented the conclusions and recommendations of the UNESCO IITE project on ICT in primary education. He emphasized that ICT enables teachers to create their own digital teaching materials and deploy them in a variety of teaching scenarios.

Prof. Badarch, UNESCO IITE Director a.i, Prof. Alain Senteni, Hamdan bin Mohammed Smart University, Prof. Ivan Kalas, Komenius University, and Mr. Mark Stone, GEMS Education, took part in the panel discussion. The session was very well received by more than 40 participants, educators and school administrators.

During the Conference Prof. Badarch met H.E. Dr. Mansoor Al Awar, the Chancellor of the Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University, to discuss potential areas of cooperation, including Cloud Campus and OER in higher education.