One of the most valuable lessons that the COVID-19 pandemic taught us is the need for a more flexible education system that is open to technology. It is about implementing an education different from the traditional one, that uses technology and takes advantage of the greater access to information that it allows, that is designed to help learn and not to assess intelligence, and in which teachers and students transcend the campus school.
This concept of a school open to technology uses teaching strategies that combine non-digital media with digital technologies. Therefore, they require new skills in their teachers who, in addition, must be committed to educational innovation. One way to do this is through the permanent use of new teaching resources.
This new conception of the school also proposes expanding learning spaces, managing digital resources with the use of platforms and facilitating learning beyond the school. This means that initiatives and efforts to create models of online education must take place in order to promote the development of adaptable, flexible and resilient schools.
On the one hand, faced with these challenges, Unesco has supported the development of a series of models of digital open schools, as part of its strategy for the digital transformation of education. This not only allows progress in the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4), but also serves to transform the modes of universal access to learning. And, on the other hand, the professional training of teachers must be updated and improved so that they have the capacity to design richer and more robust learning experiences, and so that through didactic strategies they motivate their students.
This is a teacher who, beyond teaching and explaining a series of content on a subject, arouses interest and motivates students through numerous teaching resources: nature, objects, cell phones, digital and non-digital games, or Applications. This is a learning based on real projects, where learners enjoy.
The educational transformation implies then a change in the mentality of all the members of the school. It is a commitment to a cultural change and new working methods that take 100% advantage of digitization.
This implies an open attitude to change, emotional intelligence and the ability to adapt to a flexible and changing environment.
The opinions expressed here do not commit the UTB or its directors.
*Dean of the Faculty of Education, UTB.