V International Conference “UNESCO Chairs Partnership on ICTs use in Education”

The UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (IITE) in partnership with Saint-Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation (SUAI) and its UNESCO Chair “Distance Education in Engineering”organized V International Conference “UNESCO Chairs Partnership on ICTs use in Education”. It took place on 1 – 5 June, 2015 in St.-Petersburg, Russian Federationon board of the cruise-ship “Mikhail Sholokhov” within theXVI International Forum «Modern information society formation - problems, perspectives, innovation approaches».IITE UNESCO expresses a highest appreciation to Cisco Ltd.for the support of the conference.

In the broadband context of Post-2015 education agenda as well as of the need to leverage the power of ICT to address current educational challenges and to ensure equitable quality education and lifelong opportunities for allas one of the main post-2015 education goalsand targetsthe main goals of the V Conference were:

• to analyze trends and issues of further UNESCO Chairs networking as well as to identify the best practices, successful innovative initiatives and projects contributing to developing and strengthening sustainable, inclusive and diversified systems and institutions for and with the innovations in the field of  integration of ICTs and pedagogy, including OER, MOOCs and social media, focusing on relevant  issues of education policy and standardization in education, teacher pre-service and in-service training, development of cloud  and mobile services;
• to exchange the best practices  of  the implementation of educational programmes for teacher and faculty professional development  in the field of and by means of ICTs and innovative ICT integrated pedagogical methodologies including the ones based on IITE International Master Programme  “ICTs in Teacher Professional Development”  and its separate modules;
• to  exchange the relevant experience and to define effective approaches to the development, implementation, use  and dissemination of OER, MOOCs  including the ones for teacher professional development based on UNESCO ICT-CFT;
• to improve  an  interaction  between UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs working in the field of ICTs in education and innovative pedagogy, UNESCO ASPnet schools and UNEVOC centers;
• to review critical trends in the use of ICT and to contribute to shaping future global education policies, in particular for higher education in the context of the joint project of UNESCO IITE and the Section of Higher Education of UNESCO Education Sector on foresight in higher education;
• to discuss a concept of the new IITE – UNESCO Chairs Pilot Project “Knowledge and Innovations for the Future” (KIF)  as a tool to improving the interaction  inside UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs on ICTs in education and innovative pedagogy as well as outside with other UNESCO networks and their partners from public and private sectors.

The appropriate topics, challenges and best practices were discussed at the two plenary sessions and three specialized sections. Besides, the Joint Round Table with Section “Humanitarian Analytics of Modernity” of the Forum “ICTs and New Humanism:  Alliance or Opposition” is included into the Conference Programme as a special event.

61 participants (UNITWIN/ UNESCO Chairs’ Chairholders and their representatives, the representative of the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO, the representative of Coordination Committee of the UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs of the Russian Federation, Chairman and other members of the IITE Governing Board, high-level international experts, representatives of the universities’ authorities, teacher training institutions, researchers and practitioners involved in the use of ICTs in education and innovative pedagogy) from 17 countries took part in the conference (Armenia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, China, UAE, Israel, Finland, Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Hungary, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Latvia, Taiwan and the USA).The representative of the UNESCO CI sectoralso took part in the conference. 

The participants deliberated 29 speeches and presentations, took part in the brain-storming session on foresight in ICT in education as well as in the discussion of the Concept of New Humanism in the context of ICT and media literacy organized in the frame of joint round table with another Forum section.

The Amendment to the Memorandum of Understandingon establishing of the UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs network working in the field of ICTs use in education and innovative pedagogy was signed by new members joined to the UNESCO IITE Network.

According to the results of the Conference and Forum relevant recommendations were adopted.