International Seminar 2024

The 2024 seminar of the UNESCO Chair in Education and Technology for Social Change was held on December 18 at the Open University of Catalonia. The Director of the Chair, Albert Sangrà, presented the theme of the day “The Use of Digital Devices in the Classroom”.

After the pandemic, a return to “normality” has begun that can be described as many things, but perhaps not quite “normal”. Suddenly, digital devices and technologies have become the enemy of education. Groups of parents who want “technology-free” schools, teachers who consider that technology only harms learning, and a series of positions that give the impression that we are in a process of educational “counter-reform”. On the other hand, in some countries and communities, governments are promoting the return to what they call “textbooks”, contrasting them with the use of digital technologies.

Understanding that the use of these devices at an early age has obvious risks and that their application must be monitored, it would be desirable to abandon extreme positions and assess what is good and bad about the use of digital devices and emerging technologies in the classrooms of our country, and how we can take advantage of what we find can be good, and how to limit what can be bad.

The seminar participants debated the current situation of the use of technology in the classroom, identifying the benefits and risks of its use, as well as which agents have a specific weight in this debate. Finally, a series of recommendations open to the educational community were shared in order to establish what are the determining factors when discussing this topic.

We had a presentation by Maria João Horta (Deputy Director General of the Ministry of Education of Portugal). Currently, in Portugal the debate focuses on the concern to achieve an education for the real world and the creation of safe environments. At the same time, train teachers in digital skills and develop all aspects related to digital citizenship.

A document with the most relevant interventions and ideas from the event will be available very soon.