18 May 2017
The Asia-Pacific Regional Bureau for Education and the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea, co-organized the Asia Pacific Ministerial Forum on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Education (AMFIE) on 11-12 May 2017 in Seoul, Republic of Korea.
The event’s theme was “Shaping Up ICT-supported Lifelong Learning for All”. Ministers of education, international and regional experts and national education policy-makers from 45 Member States participated in the forum to revise the role of technologies in the Asia-Pacific region.In order to address education challenges and determine strategies, the Education 2030 agenda was set out during the World Education Forum (WEF) held in Incheon, Republic of Korea, in May 2015. This agenda recognized the importance of ICT in attaining the lifelong learning goal for all. Education 2030 highlighted the need for ICTs to “be harnessed to strengthen education systems, knowledge dissemination, information access, quality and effective learning, and more effective service provision”.
AMFIE 2017 programme included plenary sessions and breakout discussions on the use of open education resources to achieve SDG 4, the ways that policy can support digital citizenship education and cyber wellness, and education innovation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The participants also visited Changdeok Girls Middle School, a pilot Future school in Seoul, to see innovative class sessions with ICT implementation. In addition, international and national experts, who put into action initiatives from the past AMFIEs, shared their experience with other participants.
AMFIE 2017 served as a platform for discussing the Asia-Pacific Regional Strategy on Using ICT to Facilitate the Achievement of Education 2030.The strategy was planned for the next five years, and it detailed priority areas for the integration of ICT in Education. The four priority areas for 2017-2022 included:
• Secondary Education and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET);
• Quality of Teaching and Teaching Practices;
• Inclusion and Equality; and
• Monitoring and Evaluation.
The four priority areas set the immediate focus for action at the national, sub-regional and regional levels.
The AMFIE group sessions for different sub-regions determined the action plans. Lina Benete, education programme specialist, UNESCO Cluster Office in Almaty, chaired the group session for Central Asia to develop the Central Asian Action Plan. The Group agreed on the following priority actions for ICT in Education in Central Asia: strengthening Education Management Information Systems (EMIS) and maximizing the full potential of ICT to expand flexible access to and improve quality of secondary education and TVET.
For more information, please visit http://www.unescobkk.org/education/ict/current-projects/amfie2017/.
Permanent link: http://en.unesco.kz/asia-pacific-ministerial-forum-2017-on-information-and-communication-technology-in