ICT in Education Prize

• “Harnessing the Power of ICTs in Higher Education for Refugees” of Kiron Open Higher Education, Germany
  The project contributes to overpass the four challenges identified by the UNHCR Commissioner for Higher Education for refugees to access higher education: legal, financial, language barriers and colleges capacities. Kiron focuses on refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced people in Germany, France, Belgium, Turkey and Jordan. 2,700 students have been benefiting of the program in partnership with 51 universities. It enables access to higher education through digital solutions. Kiron proposes an online phase harnessing the potential of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) followed by an offline phase when students study in one university and graduate with an accredited university degree. Furthermore, the project also provides a coaching service with a psycho-social support and a personalized curricula.
   
• “Online School” of Jaago Foundation, Bangladesh,
  The aim of the project is to reduce the gap of access to education of children between rural and urban areas. It is the first Free-of-Cost quality education focusing on socioeconomically disadvantaged young learners. 2,500 children within 10 connected schools have already benefited of the program. By using ICT solutions, Jaago overcomes geographical distance with no transport cost to fill in the lack of quality education and skilled teachers. The rural classrooms are connected to a teacher based in Dhaka via videoconferencing technology and their own platform. It harnesses the collaboration between rural teachers and urban teaching resources and optimizes the use of technology.

2015 - Pedagogical Innovation in the Use of ICTs in Teaching and Learning

• “National Program of Educational Informatics” (PRONIE) of the Omar Dengo Foundation, Costa Rica
  The project contributes to improving the quality and equity of learning opportunities within the public education system through the use of digital technologies. It gives priority to marginalized children and youth from rural and marginal urban areas. Since 1988, 8,674,521 students have benefited from the program in pre-schools, primary schools, secondary schools and TVET schools. The program PRONIE has developed an outstanding systematic approach to enhance students’ capacities to create ICT products across the school system. Furthermore, the program also focuses on teachers’ continuous training and monitoring to improve their teaching skills in educational informatics.
   
• Open Source Physics @ Singapore project of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Singapore
  The project has been developed by the Educational Technology Division of the Ministry of Education since 2012. Its goal is to give users, including students and teachers, the freedom to learn from, build on and share well designed ICT resources for teaching and learning physics. An outstanding innovative tool, “Open Source Physics@Singapore” for learning physics using an open platform, including open source code and open content, was developed. Both students and teachers work in a collaborative and innovative way, benefiting from the adaptable resources that it provides for better learning and teaching. So far, 9,800 students have been reached by the program in primary, secondary and TVET schools. In addition, the software application enhanced collaboration between the educational community, the Ministry and industry. It is easily scalable to a larger community as the tools and content are available worldwide.

2011 - Education Youth for Responsible Global Citizenship

• Internet-ABC, Germany
  Internet-ABC offers children, parents and educators support and information on how to handle the web safely. The content is ad-free, safe and easily accessible to everyone. Attractive and engaging sites invite 5-12-year-old children to play, learn and communicate, while reinforcing their knowledge of safe Internet use. The www.internet-abc.de website attracts 100,000 users per month on average.
   
• Dr Yuhyun Park, Co-Founder and CEO of iZ HERO, Republic of Korea
  iZ HERO is a digital leadership initiative that empowers 6-12-year-old children to become future leaders in the digital era by fostering essential skills and value-based digital citizenship. This international research-driven, award-winning programme includes a holistic online play-and-learn tool and a suite of offline programmes. It has demonstrated educational efficacy in improving children’s attitudes toward Internet risks such as cyber bullying, game addiction and online predators through academic research. To date, over 1.5 million people have visited the iZ HERO Exhibition at the Singapore Science Centre and around 70 per cent of primary schools and target students in Singapore have participated in the iZ HERO initiative.

2010: Digital Literacy: Preparing Adult Learners for Lifelong Learning and Flexible Employment

• National Institute of Continuing Adult Education (NIACE), United Kingdom
  NIACE is the leading non-governmental body promoting the interests of adult learners in England and Wales. NIACE is a membership organization with paid staff, including a specialist Digital Learning Team. Its work draws on both theoretical and practical knowledge of the methods and pedagogies which work best in offering learning opportunities to adults. It has developed a national network of 6,000 Internet access centres to serve adults in both rural and urban areas.
   
• Venezuelan Fundación Infocentro, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
  The “Technological Literacy for Older Adults” project was submitted by the Infocentro Foundation. Following its own “Pedagogy of Patience” philosophy, facilitators of the Infocentros network have experience and expertise in working with the elderly. They use a variety of strategies, techniques and resources and adapt educational practices to older users to help them overcome their technological fears and familiarize themselves with computers. Some 680 Infocentros across the country enable adults and other users to achieve lifelong learning, and have helped more than 900,000 people at national level achieve technological literacy.

2009 – Teaching, learning and e-Pedagogy: Teacher Professional Development for Knowledge Societies

• Alexei Semenov, Rector of the Moscow Institute of Open Education, Russian Federation
  Teacher professional development is the major mission of the Moscow Institute of Open Education (MIOE), led by Professor Alexei Semenov. Every year, the Institute organizes dedicated e-pedagogy development for 5,000 to 10,000 teachers and introductory modules for 30,000 teachers with extensive web-based content and technologies.
   
• Jordan Education Initiative, Jordan
  The Jordan Education Initiative (JEI) is one of Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah’s non-profit organizations which works with the Ministry of Education to drive innovation by leveraging private-sector participation. JEI was created as a pioneer model for developing education, based on fostering ingenuity, harnessing the power of technology and coupling it with proven modern teaching strategies to transform the school environment into a cradle of discovery and creativity and allow Jordanian students to imagine and realize a future reality. Since its launch in 2003, JEI has impacted the lives of thousands and made a very tangible positive impact on students, teachers, families, communities and the economy.

2008 - Digital Opportunities for All: Preparing Students for 21st Century Skills

• Shanghai TV University, People's Republic of China
  The “Changing the Digital Divide into a Digital Opportunity” project is aimed at implementing a lifelong learning system through digital means in Shanghai. It includes 230 social learning centres in Shanghai and promotes digital literacy among students, adults in employment, seniors and others.
   
• Dr Hoda Baraka, First Deputy to the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Egypt
  The comprehensive “ICT-In-Education Programme: Towards Ubiquitous Reachability to All Learners” was started in the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) in 2003 to reach out to learners through formal and informal educational practices in schools and universities, as well as non-formal education streams of systematic educational activities outside schools and universities. This project was developed by Dr Huda Baraka, First Deputy to the Minister of Communications and Information Technology. She has led the implementation of many national projects for the use of information and communication technologies in the field of education.

2007 - Open Education

• Curriki, United States of America
  Curriki’s driving mission is to make education more equitable through a global open educational resource (OER) community of educators, parents and students, enabling teachers to make learning more personalized and helping students reach their full potential. The online community gives teachers, students and parents universal access to a wealth of peer-reviewed “K-12” (kindergarten to 12th grade) curricula and powerful online collaboration tools. Curriki built the first website for open instruction and assessment. Founded by Sun Microsystems in 2004, the organization has operated as an independent non-profit organization since 2007.
   
• Claroline Connect, Belgium
  Claroline Consortium has implemented an e-learning and e-working platform (learning management system) released under an open-source GNU General Public License (GPL). It is a platform for distance training and collaborative work. Translated into 35 languages, Claroline allows hundreds of institutions from 93 countries to create free online courses.
  Adaptable to different trainings, Claroline has been developed according to teachers’ pedagogical experiences and needs. It supports course managers in their projects and stimulates them to set up efficient resources promoting the acquisition of knowledge and skills.

2006 - Enhancing Teaching and Learning

• The Cyber Home Learning System (CHLS) for primary and secondary students, the Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (MOEHRD) and the Korea Education and Research Information Service (KERIS), Republic of Korea
  The Korea Education and Research Information Service (KERIS) was established in 1999 as an exclusive national institute to promote the effective use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in education. The Cyber Home Learning System is a nation-wide e-learning system aiming to provide elementary and secondary school students in Korea with a quality education service after school hours. It has helped reduce private tutoring expenses, enhance the quality of public education, and achieve equity in education and education welfare by narrowing the education gap between regions and income levels.
   
• EDegree Programme, Kemi-Tornio University of Applied Sciences, Finland
  The eDegree Program in Lapland is aimed at unemployed adults living in rural or remote, depopulated areas. It was developed by the Kemi-Tornio University of Applied Sciences, a pioneer in distance education in Finland. Originally planned for Lapland, the project has rapidly spread throughout the country. Its effectiveness has been proven by the number of people who have succeeded in completing their studies and work.