National Inception Meeting on ICT Competency Framework for Teachers (ICT-CFT): Contextualization Harnessing Open Educational Resources (OER) in Egypt

UNESCO Cairo Office/ Regional Bureau of Sciences in the Arab States in collaboration with Ministry of Communication and Information Technologies, Ministry of Education and Egypt National Commission for UNESCO organized a National Inception Meeting on ICT Competency Framework for Teachers (ICT-CFT): Contextualization Harnessing Open Educational Resources (OER) for Egypt on 15 and 16 May, 2016 in Cairo, Egypt.

About 40 policy makers, curriculum experts, technology integrators, subject experts and teachers from Egypt participated in the meeting.

The meeting was organized to contribute to the implementation of the UNESCO project on ICT-CFT: Contextualization Harnessing Open Educational Resources (OER), which will build competencies among teachers in Egypt for the effective integration of ICT in the classroom with harnessing OER. The main objectives of this inception meeting are to: introduce expected results and background concepts of the project, build cconsensus on the expected results and timeline of the project, analyze OER-related context and assessment of needs of Egypt, analyze teacher education issues concerning ICT in Education and identify dates and costs for national workshops and activities.

Dr. Tarek Shawki, Secretary General of Presidential Specialized Councils in Egypt then made a Key Note presentation on ICT-CFT in Education: Teacher Training Context in Egypt in the context of ICT in Education Policy in Egypt. In this intervention, Dr Shawki highlighted the current in-service training of some 10 000 teachers being undertaken by the Ministry of Education (MOE) and relevance ICT-CFT within the in-service training.

Meeting was also addressed by Ms Nevine Tawfik, Head of Research, Studies and Policies, IR Division, MCIT. Dr. Reda Hegazy, Head, General Education, MOE Ms. Zainab Wakeel, Egypt NATCOM for UNESCO and Eng. Khaled Attar, Director at Ministry of Communication and Information Technologies. 

The meeting came out with a work/action plan and implementation strategy for ICT-CFT developed and agreed by the stakeholders in Egypt. Among other things, there was a recommendation to map the ongoing ICT-CFT initiatives and an ICT in Education Policy at a later period.

UNESCO’s ICT Competency Framework for Teachers (ICT CFT) is a set of competencies that teachers need to integrate ICT into their practice and professional development to advance student learning.

The ICT CFT Harnessing OER national activities were launched in August 2015 in Tunis with 7 countries in Arab Region including Egypt.  All participating countries will be linked through an electronic resource to share OER for teacher training materials linked to the ICT CFT and also share experiences and best practices in ICT in Education teacher training. In this context, UNESCO will initiate a 2 year project to support the contextualization of the ICT CFT harnessing OER in and for Egypt.

Contacts:         Hara Prasad Padhy ( h.padhy(at)unesco.org)

                        Zeynep Varoglu (Z.Varoglu(at)unesco.org)