International Seminar 2023
The 2023 edition of UNESCO Chair in Education and Technology for Social Change International Seminar on the topic of “Inclusión y usos de la tecnología para el aprendizaje: beneficios potenciales y riesgos latentes”, November 17 at Sala Polivalent de Can Jaumandreu (UOC, Barcelona). The speakers of the event are Dr. Jesús Soldevila (Professor, Departamento de Pedagogía, Universitat de Vic-Central de Catalunya) Dra. Maria Macià Golobardes (Jefa de Servicio de Apoyos y Medidas para la Inclusión, Departament d’Educació, Generalitat de Catalunya), Dr. Marc Romero (Professor, Estudios de Psicología y Ciencias de la Educación, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) and Dr. Andrea Mangiatordi, (Investigador, Dipartimento di Scienze Umane per la Formazione, Università degli Studi Milano-Bicocca, Italia). The session will be moderated by Dr. Albert Sangrà (Director of UNESCO Chair in Education and Technology for Social Change).
For years, technology has been part of the educational landscape. Initially timid, its prominence has multiplied due to the pandemic, when due to the impossibility of opening the classrooms of educational institutions, it became the only possibility to continue studying and learning. More recently, the abrupt emergence of Artificial Intelligence in the educational sector has placed technology in an even more relevant place in this scenario.
Of course, this role has lights and shadows, defenders and detractors. From those who propose that technology is an instrument that favors exclusion, to those who consider that it can be used, precisely, to better include. Furthermore, there is no doubt that the concept of inclusion itself has different readings, since there are different perspectives from which the term can be defined.
Among the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, there are three in particular that have inclusion at their foundations: Quality Education (4), Gender Equality (5), and Reducing Inequalities (10), although probably all the others as well. They must consider inclusion as a basic consideration.
UNESCO, in its latest publications, has highlighted, in an exercise of necessary balance, the demand for inclusion and the importance of technology for development in today’s society. This seminar seeks to contribute to this perspective of necessary interrelation between inclusion and the use of technology for learning.
Furthermore, being a Chair that is based at the UOC, a fully online university, which makes intensive use of technology for teaching and learning, and which, at the same time, has among its founding objectives to serve large layers of society to help them overcome any aspect that prevents them from accessing training and offer them flexibility that adapts to their needs, it makes a lot of sense to consider this issue from an internal and external perspective.
In this International Seminar the potential and risks of technology on the path towards inclusion will be discussed through brief presentations by experts on the subject and a subsequent discussion. Firstly, we will talk about the conceptualization of the term inclusion from a multidimensional vision. On the one hand, from compulsory formal education, where educational inclusion is understood as a process of identifying and responding to the diversity of the needs of all students through greater participation in learning, cultures and school communities. On the other hand, from a dimension of inclusion focused on accessibility to education, the ability to adapt to different learning processes, and the flexibility with which society increasingly requests to be able to train.
From the positions of specialists, from outside, but also from the reflection on how it is done at the UOC and how it can be done better, aspects related to the role of technology as a facilitator of inclusion, the elements of technology that facilitates or hinders inclusion, among other relevant questions about the relationship between technology and inclusion.
The synthesis of all the contributions should allow us to shed a little more light on the ambivalent relationship of these terms and the search for a balance that is beneficial for society and its needs and desire to learn.
Watch the Full Recording on YouTube