UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

09/12/2023 | News release | Distributed by Public on 09/13/2023 09:25

First edition of UNESCO’s Digital Learning Week explores frontier technologies for education

"Technological revolutions… have been sources of both hope and concern, and our conversations this week continue to cover this spectrum," underscored UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education, Stefania Giannini, addressing the 1000 participants who attended the inaugural edition of UNESCO's Digital Learning Week from 4 to 7 September 2023.

Under the banner of "Steering technology for education", the event at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris was the first opportunity to bring together the digital learning community since the COVID-19 pandemic upended the daily life of school and universities, and since generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) first hit the awareness of much of the general public. Fittingly, public digital platforms and artificial intelligence were therefore the themes of the event, the rebooted version of Mobile Learning Week, which ran for 10 years.

We must steer technology in education wisely and on our own terms, guided by the principles of inclusion, equity, quality and accessibility.

Stefania Giannini, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education

Stefania Giannini, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education, presented UNESCO's integrated vision of Digital learning and AI in education.

Participants from more than 50 countries, including 17 Ministers, joined in discussions regarding wide-ranging issues such as: the safe use of information and communication technologies; GenAI and its implications for literacy and learning foreign languages; ensuring algorithms protect fair knowledge distribution and multilingual resources; algorithm literacy; open educational resources and green skills; digital technologies for socio-emotional learning; as well as the fundamental question of inclusion, especially of those in low-resource areas, refugees, women and girls, and learners with disabilities.

© UNESCO/Marie ETCHEGOYEN

Generative AI for education and research

One of the main achievements of the event was the launch of the UNESCO Guidance on Generative AI for Education and Research, the first international guidelines to be released to explore how to reap the benefits of this new technology, which has captured the attention of the general public, whilst minimising its harm.

Generative AI can be a tremendous opportunity for human development, but it can also cause harm and prejudice. It cannot be integrated into education without public engagement, and the necessary safeguards and regulations from governments.

Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO Director-General

UNESCO issued a press release calling on governments to quickly regulate generative AI in schools. "This UNESCO Guidance will help policy-makers and teachers best navigate the potential of AI for the primary interest of learners," said Ms Azoulay.

Addressing the implications of generative AI on education, in a keynote address segment, Professor Daniel Andler of the Sorbonne University, Paris (France) said raised fear that generative AI could, in the long term, lead to the deskilling of students and teachers because the technology would give outputs effortlessly, bypassing an important learning process. Professor Stuart Russell, University of California, Berkley (USA) suggested that "we are engaging in a huge experiment on billions of people with no institutional review board approval" and requested that participants project themselves into the societies of the future whereby we are irreparably enfeebled.

Another new UNESCO publication An Ed-Tech Tragedy?,was also launched at the event and warned against the overuse of technology. This publication examines the numerous adverse and unintended consequences of the shift to ed-tech during the COVID-19 pandemic. It documents how technology-first solutions left a global majority of learners behind and details the many ways education was diminished even when technology was available and worked as intended.

Professor Yoshua Bengio at the University of Montreal (Canada) and Yann LeCun, Vice President & Chief AI Scientist, Meta (France) also shared their thoughts on "Reimagining the Futures of Knowledge and Research with Generative AI". LeCun shared thoughts about the range of applications of generative AI, including tackling climate change, whilst Bengio raised warnings about the potential of these technologies to jeopardise democratic institutions and freedom of speech, which the education sector needs to address.

Digital platforms for inclusion

The event was an occasion to showcase the major achievements of harnessing digital technologies for greater inclusion in education. On the first day, UNESCO and Unicef jointly presenting the Gateways to Public Digital Learning Initiativeto ensure that every learner, teacher, and family can easily access, find, and use high-quality and curriculum-aligned digital education content to advance their learning. This was one of the key outcomes of the Transforming Education Summit convened by UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres last November. Several countries have now signed up to take this initiative forwards.

Two excellent initiatives for inclusion in education thanks to digital platforms were celebrated during the award ceremony for the UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize for the Use of ICT in Education whose 2022 edition has been awarded to "Smart Education of China", implemented by the National Centre for Educational Technology of China, and "The National Resource Hub", ran by the National Forum for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education of Ireland.

© UNESCO/Lily CHAVANCE

On our terms

Through the plenaries and more than 20 breakout sessions, the theme that education in technology should be addressed "on our terms" repeatedly came up. This is the rallying call of the latest Global Education Monitoring Report, which examined over 200 school systems around the world and found Some education technology can improve some types of learning in some contexts. However, it warned that the long-term true costs for national budgets, children's wellbeing and the planet must be factored in.

The global dialogue on how to push the frontiers of digital technologies will continue at the next edition of Digital Learning Week, scheduled for March 2024. UNESCO will once again establish the annual event as a key milestone in steering technology for education, so that it is increasingly inclusive, quality, humanistic and accessibly to all.