UNESCO Posts

Conference of the UK UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs Programme

On 30-31 May 2023, UK National Commission for UNESCO hosted the Conference UK UNESCO Chairs Conference to mark the yearly anniversary of the UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs Programme. This event, supported by the National Commission for UNESCO, brought together over 20 participants representing some 22 UNESCO Chairs and UNITWIN in the UK. This global network encourages inter-university cooperation, collaboration and information sharing. Today, the Programme involves over 700 institutions in 126 countries.

The two days of knowledge sharing inspired new ideas, partnerships, and opportunities that highlighted the value of intellectual collaboration across the network and beyond. The value of transdisciplinarity, future-oriented approaches and the need for increased North-South-South and South-South cooperation were emphasized throughout the event.

K4A partners up to launch Dynamic Coalition

UNESCO empty during Mobile Learning Week 2020
UNESCO empty during Mobile Learning Week 2020 lockdown

K4A partners with other stakeholders helping to launch with UNESCO a Dynamic Coalition for the OER Recommendation on 2 March 2020 at UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, during the cancelled Mobile Learning Week.

The Dynamic Coalition will aim to expand and consolidate commitments to actions and strategies as well as reinforce international cooperation among all stakeholders in the 4 areas of the UNESCO OER Recommendation: i) Building the capacity of stakeholders to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute OER; ii) Developing supportive policy; (iii) Encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER;  and (iv) Nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER.

Check the new Recommendation in OER on the UNESCO official website.

ASEF ClassNet15 session on Artificial Intelligence competencies for teachers

The K4A Foundation together with the ASEF Foundation organised a workshop at the yearly 15th ASEF Classroom Network Conference. The expected output of this workshop was to provide validation of the recommendations on Artificial Intelligence competencies for teachers and learners linked to the UNESCO ICT Competency Framework for Teachers and information literacy.

 

 

Designing Teaching and Learning Competencies for Artificial Intelligence

On 7 November 2019 we held a meeting at UNESCO with the objective to examine the elements for an instrument to support teachers’ and learners’ capacity development for the use of Artificial intelligence. The basis of the meeting was the report by UNESCO Chair in teacher training technologies with OER.

K4A trustee discussing AI challenges at UN event co-hosted by Slovenia

The Slovenian mission to the United Nations, the Council of Europe (CoE) and UNESCO hosted an event discussing the challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) at the UN headquarters in New York. The event title Artificial Intelligence: Technology to Serve Humankind, Setting Legal Standards, released a document and shared the view that AI offered a number of advantages but also many risks. Moderated by Slovenian Justice Ministry State Secretary Gregor Strojin, with key input from K4A trustee Marko Groibelnik who talked about AI certification, the debate focused on legal and ethical issues of existing and future use of AI.

K4A trustee delivers UNESCO report on teacher training and Artificial Intelligence

Report on Education, Training Teachers and Learning Artificial Intelligence

K4A assisted UNESCO in delivering a report on teacher training in AI. In this report we study the different interactions between AI and Education with an emphasis on the following question: If we accept that artificial intelligence is an important element in tomorrow’s landscape, what are the skills and competences which should appear in the future curricula and how can we help to train the teachers so that they can play the required role?

This report is one of the first addressing these questions: as such it is less built as a synthesis of existing reports with an increment from previous works than as an analysis based on the experience of teachers, researchers, academics and practitioners.

K4A trustees finalizing UNESCO Recommendation in OER

The UNESCO OER Recommendation was approved by UNESCO member states on 28th May, by consensus. Its final step for approval will take place at the UNESCO General Assembly in November, 2019. K4A had one trustee as representative at the meeting (and in multiple side meetings), and we are pleased with the outcome and final text. The importance for K4A is that the policy once adopted will incentivise UNESCO member states to use Artificial Intelligence tools for OER.

Discussion on opportunities and challenges of Humans and Artificial Intelligence

We were invited by UNESCO to be part of the opening panel to their main conference Principles for AI: Towards a Humanistic Approach. The panel discussed the main challenges and opportunities in ensuring the development of artificial intelligence that serves humanity. We briefly presented our projects connecting humanity and AI such as HumaneAI and the Network of Excellence in AI in Africa. Speakers included the first Minister for Artificial Intelligence, Tencent, Facebook, Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children and more.

 

ROAM approach in AI

UNESCO held a panel discussion to deeply reflect on issues concerning Rights, Access and Multi-stakeholder Governance of Artificial Intelligence. It presented a primer report analyzing the changes that advanced ICTs are bringing to society, under the prism of the ROAM framework, with John Shawe-Taylor, UNESCO Chair in Artificial Intelligence. The “Openness” dimension was be further explored by a following session focused on Open Data and AI with Maria Fasli, UNESCO Chair on Data Science.

 

Using Artificial Intelligence and Open Educational Resurces data

The X5GON project was welcomed with enthusiastic feedback at this year’s Mobile Learning Week at UNESCO. The project was presented in its basic structure and how it can help institutions make sense of their OER materials and create organic growth ouside their repositories.