Around 30 decision makers from the Ministry of Education and Science (the MoES), the Republican Center for ICT, the National Testing Center, key universities and civil society organizations of Tajikistan, attended a two-day workshop on leveraging ICT and OER to achieve SDG 4 in Dushanbe from 22 to 23 October.
Within the framework of the UNESCO-WeiDong Group Funds-in-Trust project on leveraging ICT to achieve Education 2030, the workshop was organized by UNESCO Headquarters, Almaty Cluster Office and the MoES.
The workshop sought to enhance the capacity of policy makers in planning the sector-wide strategies and activities on ICT in education and OER, as well as to identify the strategic priorities and main activities for leveraging ICT to achieve SDG 4 in Tajikistan.
Mr Rahmatulo Mirboboev, the First Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Education and Science of Tajikistan, delivered a speech, which officially opened the workshop. He introduced Tajikistan’s achievements in leveraging ICT in education and expressed the hope of further enhancing the role of ICT to take forward the progress toward SDG 4. Mr Fengchun Miao, Chief of the Unit for ICT in Education from UNESCO Headquarters, addressed opening remarks on behalf of UNESCO. Mr Zhiqian Wang, Chairman Assistant and Overseas General Manager of the WeiDong Cloud Education Group of China, the donor to the workshop, presented Weidong Group’s approach and activities.
During the first day of the workshop, participants have received intensive training on global, regional and country experiences on ICT in education and OER practices. The training sparked heated group discussion during the second day to identify the priority areas and main activities in strengthening the role of ICT an OER in education. Education programme specialists from Headquarters, Almaty Cluster Office, Institute for Information Technologies in Education (IITE) and Tashkent Office provided training to participants and facilitated the discussions. By the end of the workshop, participants identified actions in three priority areas in Tajikistan: provision of teaching and learning resources, educators’ ICT competence development and ICT-enhanced EMIS.
In closing the workshop, Ms Lina Benete, Education Programme Specialist from UNESCO Almaty Cluster Office, affirmed UNESCO’s commitment to working with the MoES and other stakeholders on the priority areas of ICT in education. The selected priority areas should be in line with government’s commitment and programme priorities of UNESCO.
The UNESCO-WeiDong Group Funds-in-Trust project is a global project launched in 2015 to help Member States harness the potentials of ICT for the provision of inclusive, equitable and quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030.
- For more information on the project, please contact the responsible officer, Mr Fengchun Miao, at f.miao@unesco.org.