Bit Alliance took part in the conference "Let's rethink education"

05.12.2022.

On November 30 and December 1, 2022, the Ministry of Civil Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, UNICEF and UNESCO in Bosnia and Herzegovina organized the conference "Let's rethink education! A call to action to create partnerships with the aim of enabling quality digital learning for all" in Sarajevo, which brought together over 100 participants from the fields of education, technology and telecommunications. (UNICEF BiH, 2022)

The conference was based on the recommendations of the Education Transformation Summit, which was held in New York in September 2022. The summit was organized in response to the global crisis in education - the crisis of equality and inclusion, quality and relevance, and thus provided a unique opportunity to place education at the top of the global political agenda. Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) adopted a declaration of commitment, which was supported by all 16 line ministries of education, and which defines the paths of transformation of education in order to provide quality, inclusive and accessible education to all children and youth in BiH.(UNICEF BiH, 2022)

The goal of the conference, "Let's reinvent education!" A call to action" was to identify activities for establishing and improving partnerships to improve the quality of digital learning for all children and young people in BiH based on the recommendations of the Summit. The conference resulted in the document Commitment and call to action, which defines priority actions for the development of digital education in educational systems in BiH, and the main areas are: the improvement of combined and online learning, the necessity of improving internet networking and the responsible use of technology, improving the availability of assistive technology and other innovative technologies in education, developing media and information literacy, strengthening digital and pedagogical competencies of teachers and partnership with the private sector. At the basis of all these obligations is giving priority to marginalized students, teachers, schools and families. (UNICEF BiH, 2022)

Some of the promising and already existing practices of using digital technologies in education in BiH were modeled at the conference, which illustrated the potential for improving quality digital learning for all children.(UNICEF BiH, 2022) In front of the Bit Alliance, she took part in the conference operational manager Kristina Erak, who presented the edu.itkarijera.ba platform with additional teaching materials for IT teachers.

"The edu.ITKarijera.ba platform is a platform with additional materials that are adapted from and can be used by computer science teachers. The curriculum does not follow the current labor market, from elementary school to high school, and up to college, and we get staff who come to the company with a diploma, and then the company has to invest another 3-6 months of additional training in order for that person to be ready to take on any positions in the company. We have a large disparity between the labor market and education, so we decided to create this platform to somehow The materials can be downloaded for free, they contain various video materials, presentations, preparations for classes, homework assignments and solutions to these assignments. About 200 computer science teachers from Bosnia and Herzegovina are already using our materials," said Kristina.

It was concluded that Bosnia and Herzegovina should use the power of the digital revolution to ensure the provision of quality education as a public good and a human right, with a special focus on the most vulnerable.(UNICEF BiH, 2022)

Retrieved from UNICEF.org – Reinventing Education Conference (11/30/2022) Available at the link.