New initiative by UNESCO and the Chilean Ministry of Education will strengthen teachers' digital skills

A new stage is opening in the field of digital competencies for teachers in Chile. UNESCO, together with the Chilean Ministry of Education, launched on May 4, 2023 the project "Strengthening the digital competencies of teachers", an initiative that will impact the performance of education professionals in the school system. This joint work will result in a new proposal for a Digital Teacher Competencies Framework for the South American country and in training opportunities tailored to the needs of teachers.

The plan is part of UNESCO's efforts to bring together its Member States, the private sector, academia and civil society to work towards forging a new social contract for education that will help build a peaceful, just and sustainable future for all. To this end, Huawei will make available to this project its knowledge and experience of more than 30 years in areas such as 5G, artificial intelligence and the internet of things.

Claudia Uribe, director of the Regional Bureau for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC/UNESCO Santiago), said: "The influx of digital technologies is profoundly transforming all aspects of life in society, affecting all productive sectors, the labor market and also education. For this reason, strengthening and updating the digital skills of teachers is urgent and fundamental". The pilot project is estimated to initially benefit more than 1,000 teachers. It contemplates the creation of diagnostic tools for digital competencies, and an instrument that will allow the identification of gaps in the teaching staff. The initiative also includes a platform with personalized online learning paths.

Alejandra Arratia, Undersecretary of Education of the Chilean Ministry of Education, highlighted that "The pandemic has highlighted even more the opportunities, limitations, and pending challenges that we have as a country to be able to reach the benefits that technologies offer in an equitable way. For this reason, within the Educational Reactivation Plan, we have proposed the Digital Transformation Strategy, which includes this important collaboration that seeks to offer concrete tools to the educational communities to face the challenges of an increasingly digitalized world."

The digital platform of this project will also include a repository of training actions in digital competencies for teachers. It will have a system of identification, classification, and ordering of existing courses and training modules, as well as the production of new training offers designed under defined quality standards and related to the framework of digital skills.

For Huawei Technologies, it is a priority to work with the Ministries of Education of the region and UNESCO in this type of initiative, said Marcelo Pino, Vice President of Corporate Affairs of Huawei Latam and Caribbean: "This alliance seeks to strengthen and, in other cases, build technological skills of Chilean teachers from preschool to secondary education, so that they can make the most of digital alternatives in their teaching."

The initiative also contemplates establishing a Technical Advisory Council, which will be a space for dialogue with experts, educational authorities, academics, representatives of civil society, and teachers who will contribute to technically guide the development of the different actions contemplated in the project so that it becomes a success story with the potential to be replicated in other countries in the region.