Education experts from Estonia, Finland and the United Arab Emirates discussed the future of education at the panel ‘Personalised Education Empowered by Technology’. The discussion was aired live on EXPO 2020 Dubai Youtube channel on December 16 2020. See the link to the recording below.
2020 has been a challenging year, but such unprecedented times provide an opportunity for innovation and come up with extraordinary solutions, said Ulla Ilisson, the Director of Education and Youth Authority of Estonia, at the pre-EXPO panel discussion on “The use of technology in personalized education”.
“In spring, Estonia demonstrated its smooth and prompt transition to distance learning, but we must pay attention to the quality of learning and teaching: supporting networking and collaboration, reach every student, pay attention to mental health issues and use data smartly,” said Ulla Ilisson in a discussion. She stressed that it is necessary to understand learning and teaching from new and different perspectives in a way that it helps to bring together different parties, co-create a smart solution with researchers and private companies and make sense of the data to reach to the future of education. Focus is on learner, teacher and parent equally as the teacher’s role transforms increasingly towards mentorship and individual approach.
“Estonia is at the beginning of the road to the future: we are looking for ways to use artificial intelligence, how to personalise learning materials, how to design student-centred learning models,” Ilisson added.
Olli-Pekka Heinonen, the Director of Finnish National Agency for Education underlined the need to keep the core value of education – equality – in honour: personalised solutions in education are needed because equality is not achieved by offering the same solutions to all. It is necessary to follow the needs, skills and knowledge of the learner and teacher and to strike a balance between the objectives of the learner, the school and the country. In addition, he noted that the school is also a place to study co-creation and social skills that cannot be acquired from a distance alone.
Ali Al Yafei, the Advisor to the Minister for Education and Information Technology of the United Arab Emirates underlined the need for smart use of data: the more it is known about learners, their expectations, opportunities, knowledge and goals, the better solutions can be offered. It is also important to involve society in educational life, which helps to ensure continuity and learning motivation.
The moderator of the panel was Mart Laus, software engineer and team lead at Net Group.
The panel discussion was organised by the Ministry of Education and Research of Estonia and the Education and Youth Authority of Estonia. The Dubai world exhibition EXPO 2020, postponed by a year, will open its doors in October next year, and in the Estonian pavilion will showcase the achievements of many different companies and the success stories of Estonia. The world exhibition will take place from October 2021 to March 2022.
VIDEO:
‘Personalised Education Empowered by Technology’ at EXPO 2020:
