Edu-Tech and Innovation Specialists provide input to UNESCO Futures of Education initiative at 2019 mEducation Alliance Symposium – Washington DC, USA

UNESCO presented its Future of Education initiative at the ninth annual mEducation Alliance Symposium, inviting a global audience of edu-tech and innovation specialists to participate in associated consultations that will run from late 2019 into 2021. As a flagship programme of UNESCO’s Education Sector, the Futures initiative will revisit seminal questions about learning—Why? What? How? And for whom?—in order to shine needed light on the futures of education, building on the tradition of the 1996 Delors Report, Learning the Treasure Within and the 1976 Faure report, Learning to Be.  Particular attention will be paid to re-imagining the ways learning and education can contribute to the global common good in the emerging digital age

The theme of the 2019 mEducation Alliance Symposium was ‘Digital Literacy for Skills for Education and Development’.  Digitization disrupts long-held ideas about learning and education and UNESCO explored potential transformations with symposium participants, who were a mix of representatives from donor organizations, NGOs, foundations, private sector companies, UN agencies, and academic institutions.  UNESCO was joined in the closing plenary session by Cristobal Cobo, a senior Education Specialist at the World Bank; Pat Yongpradit, the Chief Academic Officer at Code.org; and Tina Appiah, Founder and CEO of Ghana Code Club.

UNESCO is a founding member of the mEducation Alliance, a coalition of organizations that hosted the Symposium from 8 to 11 October 2019 at the United States Institute for Peace in Washington DC. UNESCO also sits on the Alliance’s Steering Committee which voiced support for the Futures of Education and will facilitate the organization of associated consultations and the dissemination of communications to increase awareness and visibility.