3rd Edition of Transforming Education Conference for Humanity (TECH) now open for Entries

Deadline: 1 July 2019

Applicants are invited to apply for Transforming Education Conference for Humanity (TECH) which will held in partnership with the State Government of Andhra Pradesh, India, aims at showcasing the role of digital technologies in enabling a shift from “transmissive pedagogies” to “transformative pedagogies” to create more peaceful and sustainable societies.

The conference aims to showcase the potential of digital pedagogies in the scaling of main streaming SEL in education systems, school curricula and teacher training. Digital pedagogies are beginning to transform traditional relationships of knowledge and learning, making it much easier to achieve many of the long-held pedagogical ideals such as ubiquitous learning, active knowledge making, dialogical and reflexive relationships, and individualized learning.

Conference Objectives

The conference is expected to generate the following outputs and follow up measures:

• A Conference proceeding on selected papers
• Experts Statement on use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the ownership of education-related information
• A Call for Action to mainstream SEL in education systems

Conference Tracks

• Explore: To highlight insights from the latest research from the neurosciences, data science, cognitive and behavioral sciences to understand the potential of digital technology to transform education.
• Experience: To share on the ground real life experiences gained from the use of digital learning tools to augment SEL, ESD, GCED and related areas in and out of the classroom.
• Empower: To develop capacities and readiness of participants to explore using digital learning tools to take action to shape peaceful and sustainable societies.

Conference Themes

1. Transformative Pedagogies for SEL: The need for resilient and adaptive individuals to rapidly changing environments is the need of the hour. Recent research has demonstrated that students need to be “socially aware” and “emotionally-connected” in order to learn and for societies to flourish. That SEL skills can now be explicitly taught in the classroom has also been demonstrated.
   • Participants are invited to:
     • Present the research evidence for SEL delivered in traditional and/or digital forums
     • Showcase good practices in curricula for building social and emotional skills through gaming and digital learning tools and methodologies
     • Provide hands-on training to educators and youth to develop and employ innovative gaming and digital learning technologies to directly or indirectly deliver SEL experiences that promote values of peace, global citizenship and sustainable develop.
2. Reimagining Learning Spaces for Planetary Citizenship:
   • To achieve a more peaceful and sustainable society, we need to move away from a culture of competition towards a culture of peace and collaboration, recognizing spatial and temporal interdependence amongst us, and our embeddedness and dependence on the ecosystems.
   • Experts and practitioners of education for sustainable development (ESD), global citizenship education (GCED), global learning, human rights education, peace education, education for gender equality and education in general are invited to explore approaches to build a culture of peace and sustainability at school and community levels.
   • Participants are invited to:
     • Organize a scenario building workshop to envision probable, possible and desirable futures
     • Share good practices of integrating ESD, GCED, global learning, human rights education, peace education, education for gender equality etc. in whole school approaches or informal or non-formal learning spaces
     • Showcase examples of innovative practices for using games or simulations to build awareness on concepts of peace and sustainability, or SEL
3. Data, Learning & Education – Role of AI: Data Science, in general, & Machine Learning, in particular, has caught the imagination of the world and field of education too has seen widespread utilization leveraging ‘narrow’ (specialized) AI such as automated grading, adaptive learning, individualized content discovery at scale. AI could instantly help discover an astounding amount of information, curate supplementary learning resources to meet individual student interests and needs, provide teachers with a virtual teaching assistant, and allow students to connect with peer learners as well as a virtual peer or tutor wherever and whenever needed.
   • Participants are invited to:
     • Critically reflect upon the profound impact AI could have on how education and training is organized, including the automation of not only low-skill or routine tasks but also high-skill and cognitive tasks; the redefinition of 21st century skills; and the rethinking of the meaning of human existence and well-being
     • Share ideas on if and how we can or should embed the principles and values of peace and sustainable development in AI
     • Showcase cross-border data exchange and data mining protocols facilitating sharing of global insights powered by distributed Data sources

How to Apply

Interested applicants can apply via given website.

For more information, please visit https://mgiep.unesco.org/tech2019