Digital learning futures
The COVID-19 pandemic supercharged reliance on connected technology and pushed education deeper into digital ecosystems. For much of 2020 and 2021, computers and internet connections temporarily replaced schools and dictated whether hundreds of millions of students could access educational opportunities.
Although many schools have reopened, the digital transformation of education continues to accelerate. More and more teaching and learning is moving to virtual spaces.
In this new context, connected technology must advance aspirations for inclusive education that facilitates sustainable development based on principles of social and economic justice, equity, and respect for human rights.
Around the world, there are promising examples of technology enlarging access to knowledge and information, enriching educational processes, and improving learning outcomes. But these examples are not common enough.
Increasingly, there are warning signs that the digital transformation of education carries underappreciated challenges. Teachers, students, and policy makers have witnessed the many ways that technology can heighten learning inequality; increase student isolation; narrow and privatize educational experiences; homogenize teaching and learning; undermine the professional autonomy of teachers; produce harmful environmental impacts; violate privacy and trust; and consolidate power and control outside public oversight.
Gateways to Public Digital Learning
‘Gateways’ is a global initiative jointly run by UNESCO and UNICEF to help countries establish and improve public digital learning platforms. It facilitates cross-border cooperation to ensure that all students, teachers and families have access to high-quality, well-organized and curriculum-aligned digital education content.
An Ed-Tech Tragedy?
An Ed-Tech Tragedy? examines the numerous adverse and unintended consequences of the shift to ed-tech. 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.
GEM 2023 Technology in Education
