Main

Tools for Education in a Globalized World

Brought initiatives to impact thousands of people educational opportunities and their educational quality using Innovative ...

Kinich School

1 day ago

in high school thank you so much for the welcome Al nice to see you all and to to be sharing this panel with cesy Carlos so exciting um my favorite class in high school was actually art um because it was just a time within the the school hours that it felt like play and it was I was doing stuff that I was already enjoying doing at home but this time with the teachers guidance approval encouragement so that was my favorite time of the week for sure thank you very much Melissa and now I'm going to
introduce H josuela Vanda he's a passionate leader for exceptional education projects with over 16 years of experience leading educational efforts in various context in his current role he directs Innovation research and learning initiatives at infotech a government research center focused on information Technologies he's been able to push brought initiatives to impact thousands of people educational opportunities and their educational quality using Innovative education models that go hand inan
d with efforts to expand access to information Technologies he's currently in charge of nationally strateg of of a nationally strategic project to build the largest intelligent and computer technology School in Mexico J has an undergraduate St undergrad studies in computer science engineering and industrial engineering he holds an MBA in leadership by the university autonoma noreste and a master of education degree by Harvard University he's currently a doctoral candidate in educational sciences
and he's a teacher columnist in several magazines and newspaper and director of a nonprofit Collective welcome Jose which was your favorite subject in high school hi Ali hi everyone my favorite this sounds weird after you just reading what you read about me um but my favorite subject in high school was history um I really liked uh the history class because I really like the teacher um which is a foundational part of enjoying learning and I really enjoyed the fact that she would allow us to have
our own opinions about the subjects that we were being taught and that we were able to discuss it openly um and without judgment in class and so that was for me a very interesting learning experience that taught me a lot about how people learn okay thank you very much for sharing um and well it's super interesting because all of us studied High School in a in-person model so we had to go to school as everyone knows and I feel that during this last Maybe 20 years everything has been growing evol
ving to Smart cities smart houses smart everything and we do not improve in the same Pace in education and we still have the same models we used to have maybe even 70 60 years ago and we keep doing the same in the classroom so let's begin this panel with the question how do you believe that technology and technological tools artificial intelligence can be better um used for the learning process for the educative process and you can give us opinions or examples who wants to start mie you want to
start ah sesy perfect go ahead yes um so I think um it's no secreted artificial intelligence is it's not going anywhere uh and it's just becoming a part of our of of our everyday life and lots of different aspects and I think education should be um also redesigning the way we teach in classrooms uh to just get adapt to you know our current situation um I think especially more of the senior staff are a bit more reluctant to adapt to and to implement these tools you know in the classroom but I thi
nk there's also a shift as well in in creating a more Blended learning approach uh for classrooms that implements both technology and um the usage of you know internet and and other resources as well as you know interacting onetoone with the uh teacher in the classroom um I think there's also a shift um maybe you um disagree or agree into Student Learning Center so instead of the teacher being the one who is um explaining and talking the whole time it should it's becoming more of a student cente
red learning where the student is more responsible it has more of an active role um so I think there's a lot of time consuming um clerical tasks for professors such as content creating grading assessment um and I think we could make use of this tools of this um artificial intelligence and Technology tools to um streamline those processes to make it a bit more um automated so as teachers were're in charge of grading um exams so nowadays we we have tools to our disposition that we can create and t
ailor the exams with multiple choice um open-ended questions so we have uh these resources where the software can automat um automatically um give us the grade and then just assess everything and and that saves a lot of time uh also in providing feedback so there are tools where you can U there are uh apps where we can tailor the feedback depending on the student responses um content creation I think it's something that uh is very useful so students can now uh sorry uh teachers and professors ca
n now tailor the content of of their lessons depending on the students needs so you can just really quickly prompt um I need a lesson on History um based on bals so now there's software for basically creating all this content and that saves a lot of time for uh teachers um and uh Ju Just making a bit of more inclusive um materials as well for students with disabilities so there's uh a lot of tools that we can as teachers use in in creating this that saves a lot of time for us and it's actually g
iving us more resources um and I don't know if anybody will um just to briefly uh finish with this question uh for language learning as well there's a lot of resources that 20 years ago 15 years ago you know didn't exist so now we have apps that will correct your pronunciation on this spot like live feedback uh grammar usage vocabulary so there's a lot of um tools that we could be using uh so we can encourage our students to do more of Independent Learning and then they will get that feedback au
tomatically um so yeah I think those are um very important tools that we make it uh we make um we could make use of thank oh sorry I'm just fascinated by all of the examples that Cecilia shared and and yeah I I totally agree with that and I think that you know even like going going back a step um I think the facing all of these all this wealth of of technological tools really poses a challenge to teachers that go not only on the on on the skill set not not only on the knowing how to how to opera
te them but also in the mindset of approaching these tools with uh from a learner's perspective themselves um and really you know like challenging that verticality that sometimes we see in traditional education of the teacher being the holder of all knowledge the ultimate gatekeeper of the the experience that the students has which right now is not it doesn't like it doesn't happen like that anymore right like everybody has the Hall of knowledge in in in their pockets and to me um an example tha
t I I always go back to when I think about this um was shared uh by a colleague in in in Bolivia a colleague called Eran Vega erang is a an English teacher and um he he he told me that one day he was teaching class to his 12-year-old students and they were like giggling in the class in the in the cell phone and they were just like you know there was there was something happening there attracting their attention and when Eran went to to talk to them see what was going on they were like oh we foun
d out a website that creates love stories about our favorite characters our favorite the famous people that we love he was like wow that's so interesting and then he realized he like approached them and was like oh show me how are you doing this that sounds really cool and the girls were using chat GPT and they were asking Chad gbt to write these love stories for their ENT entertainment they had no idea that Chad GPT was you know like this chat B powerful for them the way that they used it was t
o create love stories and to me that um reminds me of this importance of approaching these technological tools these digital territories uh in order to really understand what is the what is what are what are the experiences that our students are having um and design interventions that can be more active can be more meaningful for them and that really set the that become Stepping Stones towards uh the development of of more complex abilities and like Al mentioned in in in the introduction I I wor
k for for the Wikipedia Foundation we we are the nonprofit that supports H Wikipedia and a dozen other uh projects H free knowledge projects and our ultimate goal is to have everybody participate in the in the some of of of human knowledge so we want everybody to have access to information and also Empower people to contribute information to these projects and we I'm sure I don't know raise your hands or type in the chat if you have opened Wikipedia in the last week like have you have you used i
t yeah it's it's already kind of like a quick stop yeah in our in our in our Journeys online and it's and it's a really powerful tool to develop H critical critical literacies you know yeah and so you know teachers and students alike they stop by Wikipedia they get the information they need and they move on but sometimes H miss the the wealth of resources that Wikipedia shows you um if you go on the Wikipedia and you kind of like remove the curtain you will see that it shows you how many uh peop
le edited the article who edited it demands sources of informations there's also a discussion section where you can see people debating about the way an article is written is it written from a neutral point of view is there information missing are these sources valid and those are kind of interactions that we miss when we just go and you know for very specific tasks and and get information um and at this and it's it's very it's very helpful when you are trying to teach a students you know digita
l literacy when you're trying to develop their median information literacy skills um and even just to become aware Ware of how the internet is shaped by people like us you know sometimes we're used to approaching the internet and finding all of the information ready there but we miss the fact that there are actual humans that put that information there in the first place and that right now what artificial intelligence tools are doing is just Gathering that sum of information and presenting them
in a more digestible way in a more personalized way um so yes I think it all of this to me goes back to that shifting mindset and that human perspective uh at the end of the day wow um well bouncing back on what you both said I I don't want to be a cynic I don't think I really don't think that we haven't made immense strides in really reshaping the way Education Works for people I believe that we have I really think that um the way we used to do things is vastly different like five years go from
what we're doing right now uh the pandemic had definitely a big effect on that but I think we had already begun reshaping a lot of the education models and education tools that we use uh both in classrooms and in other education spaces so um I do think I'm an optimist and I think that we have made tremendous steps in in advancing educational models according to technology and and technological tools um a big example of this is um you were mentioning artificial intelligence well artificial intel
ligence is non-existent um there's no such thing right now as as an artificial intelligence we have machine learning models which is basically teaching algorithms how to recogniz patterns um that's the AI as far as we have been able to advance it and the important part about knowing this is that in the educational process and for those of us who have the pleasure and the privilege of um teaching in a classroom is you can take away that intelligence part and give them case studies and give them d
ifferent learning experiences that actually allow them to use this tools and say okay let's take away the fact that you might use these tools if you wanted to cheat right and I always use um AI detectors to check on their work and you usually know from the Baseline of their work um also who's doing it and who's not doing it uh but the thing is when you take away that that cheating part you know you you enable them to use that knowledge and I enabled them to use that knowledge and to use those to
ols to enrich their um learning experience and to actually use all available technological tools out there for them to be able to uh by their own criteria Define um their learning experience and uh be able to integrate new knowledge and something which is very important nowadays with all the fake news going around learn what is relevant knowledge and what sources are trusted sources for knowledge and so then they can shape their own um criteria and they can filtrate um what's coming in and what'
s what what should be kept out right so one one very important thing is allowing people to shape with all available tools out there their learning experience and another important part is actually uh pertaining to the educational models which at least in where I work we have been work really really hard for the past few years to reshape the educational models to make them all uh flexible and um adapt them for distance learning because we don't really see a point in in having people coming in and
sitting in a classroom all together I mean we can do that virtually we can do that more comfortably um wearing shorts and and a shirt on top and no one will know um because it's just more convenient for everyone right so why not do that and why not expand at the same time the access to technological tools as a human right so that people everywhere can access these um learning experiences and use them for their own personal gain and their own personal benefit and development you know so that's a
lot of what we've been doing and at the same time we realized there isn't much um research on what's the Imp of educational programs when they're online I mean we do have research on the impact on learning but we do not really have much other than that so what we're doing right now is we have an an intervention in place uh with tutoring with online tutoring and we're doing like a control group and a test group and please do not speak about this openly um but we we do have preliminary results ye
t um and they show that people in online technological programs who actually have tutoring are doing much better than those who do not right so there is some things that we still can learn about how we're shaping these new educational models and what works and what doesn't work and there's still a lot of room to do research in what works and what doesn't work so if you guys are also planning on doing research on this please give us your ideas and and we're more than happy to uh give you space to
implement them in our programs thank you very much it feels like education then cesi you have a comment on that go ahead um I don't know if it's possible but I I have some slides with just examples of certain apps that um teachers could use um uh but I don't know if it's possible to show them before we go to the next question or I can just um I guess post them on the chat I think we are okay in time so if you want to share them in the screen it's it's okay and then we go to the next question gr
eat um real quick I mean I thought that they um some of them are really cool I mean some of them I've already tried them some of them I just no excess but haven't used them myself um so this uh this is audio pen it basically uh um yeah you speak to it and then it gives you the text and but then it also enhances it so you can edit it from it as well uh so if you're brainstorming for a lesson or you know for an essay or uh for a lesson plan uh this is uh something that you could use as well so can
va magic right um uh Works uh very similar as well um so curepod helps you create interactive lessons um uh yeah work clouds uh open Ed response polls that you can use in the class that are very interactive um uh you do Aid that AI as well it helps you with uh lesson development syllables uh uh de um design uh discussion prom so um so just to give you some examples of you know um apps and websites that you can use to to help you with the education and with language learning as well I was amazed
in the amount of um yeah opportunities for for students to actually practice and you know get feedback on their pronunciation so there's Lango talk um there's language um language Pro lingo star lingoo so you'll get feedback um on you know um pronunciation vocabulary usage uh grammar um I'm happy to share this uh on the chat or through Ali if anybody's interested um but I just I'm amazed on the amount of you know different opportunities that there are because when I started learning uh languages
I didn't have these um yeah um options so I think a lot of people could be benefiting from them thank you very much now moving on to the next question I feel that I jumped in directly to the questions of the panel and I didn't let our guest today at least write in the chat where are they connecting from uh so please feel free to share where are you listening this uh panel from in the chat introduce yourselves please as we as we move to the second question so the second question uh is about the
influence uh how is globalization multiculturality uh influencing the the educa educ educative process and how can we integrate these tools these technological Tools in our daily work as educators I I can start um I think that well just um we're g you're going to hear me talk a lot about Wikipedia but um in Wikipedia as maybe a lot of you already know um anybody can write content you know if you go on a Wikipedia article there's a button that says edit so you can correct a typo you can add new s
ources you can add images and it is a collaborative encyclopedia um in that in and it is also available in over 300 languages um and something that is to me continues to always be baffling there's a there's a really awesome um infographic uh article study um that shows how the internet looks like in terms of languages uh and you can see how the majority of the internet content is written in English then you have Spanish Chinese uh like in in a lower percentage but English dominates right and so
when I think about globalization in multiculturality it you know of course you see you see content from all over the world but it's still very biased toward uh towards a specific uh language group and specific um also a specific group of of people that shape the content of the internet and what we see um in the case of Wikipedia for example there are over 300 uh language versions of of Wikipedia and if you go on Spanish Wikipedia um all of the articles are in Spanish but the the people who contr
ibute to these might be from Latin America might be from Spain or might be you know uh people who speak English as a second who speak Spanish as a second language so even though we're all communicating with the same language there are still a lot of cultural differences that when you interact on the platform demand uh a better a higher sense of cultural sensitivity of crosscultural intelligence of self-regulation even and and different communication etiquettes um being constantly aware and mindf
ul that the person on the other side of the screen even though speaks the same language that you even though you are on the same platform might look completely different than you and might have a completely different understanding of what you're trying to communicate I think is a really powerful reminder of of you know just just just these meta skills that that demand connecting online in in this time time and age um um a practical exercise that we encourage a lot of teachers to do when they app
roach Wikipedia for the first time as a as a learning platform as as a pedagogical tool is to um look on go on Wikipedia in Spanish or in their main language and look for articles about that are relevant for their locality you know like go look if there's an article about a person that is famous in your hometown or a locality in near your city and then look at how the how much information about this topic is contained in that article and now go look at a different an article about a topic that i
s more relevant like internationally like you know compare the monu a monument in your city versus the article of the Eiffel Tower and you will no notice how much information is missing in the content about your local realities depending on where you are of course um but in the case of Peru for example the information that exists about Peru is very very minimum compared to the information that exists about Europe about the UK about France um and so just identifying and acknowledging that even th
ough we have access to all the the information in the world but there are still those gaps um can be really powerful to approach the internet and and the global the globalization aspects that we uh witness on these spaces and also by identifying those gaps figuring ways to address them figuring ways on how you yourself and your students can make an incidence on these digital territories Wikipedia is one way but there are there are multiple other projects um there's an an organization called Glob
al voices for example who H whose whole mission is to bring more content H in indigenous languages to the internet and more content about indigenous populations and training people or empowering people to to take to to take ownership of these of these digital spaces and and really shape them with with their own knowledge and you know this involves digital literacy skills but also you know even uh writing skills composition skills and you know digital citizenship like what I was mentioning at the
beginning interacting with each other um but yeah that those that's kind of like the first things that come to mind when I think about about globalization and and Tech tools I can jump um next I believe that there is a lot at stake when we speak about how technological tools and um and multiculturalism can you know add and and be integrated in an educational process but I do believe that when we speak about that we definitely need to go back again to um the the human right of the access to digi
tal tools because one thing that is happening right now and that exponentially grew during the pandemic is that the gap between people who had access to Tech tools and those who didn't in terms of um educational attainment and educational access became gigantic right so we need to demand from our officials in government and we need to demand from um government organizations all around the world that we really have to dig in and expand um digital access as a human right because there is not going
to be a future for Education Without the access to digital tools that is a fact this is already been happening for the past 20 years or so and it's becoming more and more r relevant and that Gap is growing faster right so we definitely need um to understand that and secondly when we speak about multiculturalism I think it is embedded in how we use technology today I mean um every day you can't go on social and on social media and not see uh what's going on in Gaza not see um what's going on in
Sudan not see um Tik toks from like Korean um pop bands and you know all these stuff is constantly coming to us um in both formal spaces of education and inform formal spaces of education and I believe this is one big shift that is already happening educational spaces are moving away from classrooms and more into informal Lear learning spaces right so the more we understand how how we can um use technological tools to take the classroom to the person and not the person to the classroom um will b
e able to advance more um but in the in in terms of multiculturalism we are also seeing you know a very interesting contrast of perspectives like who 10 years ago knew anything about the Israel Palestine conflict and just because we're constantly bombarded with it on social media and on every platform um nowadays you basically have to know about it and have to be informed so what we are seeing is the world um is somehow informally uh creating a a global culture right and to be integrated into th
is Global culture again you need access to digital tools and those tools will enable you to create your own view of the world u based on how you use them for your education uh based on the tools available to you right so the more we invest in being able to provide better digital education tools to people we are contributing for them to be able to integrate themselves into this Global culture um thank you uh and M if I could add to it um I think globalization has made information more accessible
to a lot of people I understand they're still a big part of um the population that does not have access to Internet and all these uh technological tools um but um I think it's very important to make our students aware of um all the cultural differences uh just exposing them to different perspectives and create cultural competent students and I think sometimes um I mean talking from my own experience so I'm originally from Mexico and I used to think abroad was just Europe and when I had the oppor
tunity to study in China it just opened my mindset to a lot of different perspectives uh perspectives I hadn't considered and it just made me very interested in learning more about um other cultures and I understand I'm in a very privileged position to to having uh gone through that um experience that not everybody can get but I think nowadays with these technological tools we could expose our students to different perspectives different cultures uh even just within one language we can expose th
em to different accents um and um and I think we can do that uh through um yeah uh collaboration uh just to give you an example when I had the opportunity to study uh Technologies and translation um and interpreting program in the University of wolver Hampton and in ganton Belgium and um we had a weekly presentation from different uh a different academic or just a different research student and we would have these um sessions on a weekly basis so we would um have presenters from China from Russi
a from um Canada so all talking about Ai and Technologies and interpretation and translation um and I thought that was just fascinating because we could hear different perspectives and their cultural um context would you know enable them to create a a model that wasn't available maybe in a different um country so I thought it was just fascinating how we could share uh that knowledge uh thanks to you know globalization and like video conferencing and and all these uh different tools so I think it
's um Technologies is helping us kind of uh brid um that uh Gap that I think be for you know 20 years ago I could have never imagined that people would collaborate on the same project one in russan one in um Venezuela or in Peru um so I think it's important to uh Foster you know that cultural competence to our students uh and I think it would um help them to become more tolerant as well to to other cultures um just faser more inclusive U World overall and um yeah more respect for others and now
day I think we can make use of uh all the Technologies um uh I don't know when I was learning French and Italian I didn't have the opportunity to watch TV in French now you can do that so I think we could Implement those um with our students so I encourage them to to have that Independent Learning session and then come back to the classroom and interact with the other students of what they learn from that in individual process I guess the best example is this panel because the three panelist are
in a very different different uh latitude of the world and we are here sharing thoughts about the same topic and this is what the tools um make easier for for everyone know like to be close to people you wouldn't be in in a regular face-to-face basis no um okay so the third question uh for you in the panel is how do you integrate AI in your daily job in your daily work and how do you think that we can integrate it to the to educative um labor every day to educative uh yeah work every day yeah I
can start on this one so um how do I integrate AI in work I work for the government so we don't have regular intelligence let alone AI um no that's a joke um we we do have like we're on the verge of building the largest AI lab in terms of capacity in Latin America so if you guys have projects that you want to do we will soon have like immense AI capacities um and we basically do work which you might not realize is is relevant in terms of you know how we were using AI but uh during the pandemic
if you guys um would see the daily conferences from a doctor called um Lopez gatel I think it was his name U this guy would present a Mobility covid index uh basically showing you guys if people were staying at home or not uh we were using your uh phone data through Google to create that index um so yeah you guys basically were telling us by agreeing to the terms of you know Google Maps if you guys were staying at home or if you were shuffling around and and that's how we created that and so the
re's a lot of technological tools and AI tool tools that we have been using yeah most people were not staying at home um that we have been using to basically integrate it into our you know everyday lives not just work um but the thing is like as of late we have been developing tools specifically for for the government so um as you all might know like all government agencies have a budget um and so now now we do have that on an integrated system that is linked to how you uh pay contracts how you
pay your employees how like everything and um that is not only advancing you know how we do things and and accelerating how we do things but it's also integrating you know amongst uh the the entities that are using it to tell us you know how to do it better and how to plan better in terms of budgeting for the future this is one um AI tool that which is working uh we we are also creating an intelligent um email product to avoid you know cyber security breaches we also work with um developing cybe
r security tools which are now on the facee of testing we are creating AI tools to help um the government get rid of expensive licensing from uh private partners and private um service providers which you know are just insanely expensive and we're using all open source um so yeah we're like on a daily basis one developing products um of AI which impact not just our work but will impact like everyone's work in the in the public sector um that's one very important thing and the second part of the
question which was um how do I think we can integrate it into um education daily I think I already spoke about the in the in the first question but a very important thing for me is taking away the stigma that using AI for education is somehow cheating is somehow doing something wrong like let them go to chat GPT let them use any tool available out there because that's real life and that's how they're they're going to develop in the future I mean if you're at work and your boss ask you to do some
thing you're not going to say oh I cannot use chat GPT or I cannot you know go ask someone right the thing is we need to teach for problems that do not exist yet and if I want to teach you how to solve problems that I don't even know what problems are going to be around in like 10 20 30 50 years what I really need to teach you is how to be someone who can integrate skills and knowledge in a very effective way so that you can phase whatever the world is throwing at you in the future and to do tha
t you really need to help people since a very early age to learn how to integrate skills and tools and knowledge that can help them develop on their own right this is basically the framework for lifelong learning and lifelong learning is no longer a choice we do not have a choice of saying I you know I studied law 10 or 20 or 30 years ago and I'm a lawyer and that's it I don't need to learn anything new this is not the way the world works right now even things like law move so quickly because of
the changes that need to be happening every day that people need to learn continuously and in integrate this view of U lifelong learning as part of who they are right so I believe technology and AI can really help us to develop those skills in people hi I can I can follow up uh thank you H um I think I metion in the first question some of the apps that I've used um but um so I work in different um Industries and when I I now work in international recruitment so we use technology would use uh so
ftwares to see where the interest is coming um from so in the United States in Canada and Latin America we see educational Trends so we make decisions uh based on analytics and like data driven decisions so we see what kind of subjects are more appealing in the West coer in the East Coast or in um Central Mexico or in southern Chile so that I think that's very fascinating um how many people are actually applying to universities abroad how many people are graduating with certain GPA or certain gr
ading um I also work in in Translation and now it's very interesting because there's a lot of cat tools so basically um technology assisted translation and interpreting so you can see uh with AI I saw a video the other day of I think it was hurry who was giving a speech and next oh no Smiley Cyrus she was giving a speech uh thank you speech and AI automated Aris um a d instead of dubbing uh you know with somebody else it just I I automatically dubbed her video with you know adapting the video as
well which I thought it was crazy um but anyway anyway there's lots of tools like the ones I've mentioned that you can use in technology um and um I think we should educate our our our professors or teachers to adapt all of these tools within the classroom because it's um it's imminent it's not going anywhere and uh students can really benefit from and I think the students that learn the most are the students that have fun and that enjoy what you know they're learning and the process um and how
they're doing this and I think there's a lot of hesitancy from um professors from uh teachers and just adapting this to their everyday teaching um but I think a lot of the students could benefit from that instead of um yeah sticking to the regular or old school way of teaching so these new models I think could benefit only the students and saving time for the teachers as well um yeah just to to add what J and Cecilia already shared I there's um a phrase a quote I a say I can't remember sorry I'
m it's the end of my day and my English is running out but um this uh education um researcher and uh expert I think seer in education Poli educational policy Michael fan fulan he has this phrase that says something like pedagogy is the driver technology the accelerator so to me you know it all comes back to to to the purpose of what you are trying to to achieve and on a on a you know classroom level on a learning experience level and then on a personal level on um I start with a problem that I'm
trying to solve right and then I find the tools that can help me solve that problem and that can make my life easier um the way that J cilia have described as well um personally the one of the first tools that I use that had these AI powered kind of services um was this uh this one called calendly I don't know if anyone has use it has used it but kend basically makes an analysis of your schedule if you start putting all of your meetings there and then it asks it allows you to block CH chunks of
time in order to have time to focus and so you can tell it like hey I I really need like at least five hours per week where I have no meetings and they will and and the app the cly will find those kind of blogs and just make you unavailable so nobody else can can put meetings on top of that that really helpful um I at the Wikimedia Foundation we we are about 700 uh employees and and we work from all around the world so scheduling is always always always an issue um and and uh and then the way t
hat I use chat GPD the most because of the same reason is as a personal assistant because uh half of my team sometimes is only available or we our time zones uh our working hours because of the time zones only overlap maybe half of my working day half of the of of my work day and basically by myself you know so I need someone to bounce ideas off of so I can go and chat gbtm be like you are an expert on this I'm trying to achieve this um please give me five questions that I should pay attention t
o in order to achieve this this goal right and then we'll I I'll use it as an assistant I think I've seen this um uh meta metaphor this this illustration of of thinking about Chad GPT as a wise person in a cave you know somebody who has all of the answers but they are kind of like hidden and disconnected from reality so you really need to to be mindful about how you build your prompts and how you how you really communicate what you're trying to achieve in order for these wise person to to actual
ly be helpful to you um and yeah just just one final example um on in The Basque country in in Northern Spain um something that uh a lot of Wikipedia volunteers realized uh in working with children in building encyclopedic content on Wikipedia in The Basque language was that you know children are not used to or they're not enjoying as much that experience of reading an encyclopedia as you know it was 20 30 100 years ago because of all of the rich multimedia content that they have available at th
eir fingertips so if we really want you know like textbooks encyclopedias to connect to engage them they have to rise up to that challenge um so Wikipedia volunteers is there they started using uh mid journey and image Generation Um machine learning tools to enrich articles about um local mythology so they started giving them prompts about you know there's the description of this mythological creature you know create an illustration and so we can use that and put it in the article so that this k
ind of like you know Concepts they can have a more visual representation they can be more engaging um and it is it is a challenge to work with generations of of Highly visual Learners that are looking for more interactive uh and and Rich richer context um and content um but so yeah just just to kind of share th those kind of examples but again to me it goes back to that to that purpose um and that problem that that these technological tools can help us solve thank you very much medisa so now it'
s time for everyone to join in the conversation so now we want people from the public to share their own ideas or questions for our panelist so I will ask if anyone wants to start with a question or an opinion there's there's very participative people in the sessions I see CLA online she's always participating CLA you want to join with a question well hello hello can you hear me yes yes excellent very nice so um right now I have class so I have to go but I was very interested in in what Jose was
saying like how we need to ask you know the government to have to give us accessibility to to get internet and to get tools in the schools you know I work in a secondary and right now it's very difficult to have teachers allowing students bring cell phones to the classroom and I think is um you know it's silly because they have access to it how can they you know close those those doors those windows for the students to start getting into more technology so for me it's a little bit frustrating b
ecause every time that I have to use a tool in my school I have to ask permission to the direction I have to explain exactly what am I going to use it for I have to tell them how many children I'm going to have with cell phones in the classrooms and one of the of the things that happen is that a lot of teachers are scared of being recorded by the students but I think that if you are you are sure of what you're teaching you are confident of what you're doing and you're a kind person there shouldn
't be a problem you know someone recording you teaching something or I mean any any subject I'm I'm an English teacher but I mean any subject so you know I think that a lot or more teachers should come to these conversations know and get more information about how you can use in classrooms I know that that some of them are very scared and I understand because some of them they do not know a lot about technology and it's scary to start a new tool when you don't you're not sure about it I understa
nd that part but it's our or is the necessity of the teachers to start implementing those things in classroom to help the students develop in the future because it's not for us right it's for them and and for their future so that's it I'm sorry I gota go because I have class right now but thank you very much for this and um SES M thank you very much for sharing this information with us Al thank you very much for giving us the opportunity you know around the world to to come to these conversation
s and to get more informed about the topic thank you very much guys thank you Clara is there any question or comment from the participants in this session well just bouncing off of that again we really need to drive into the necessity of access to information technology and just making a a short commercial we have been part of the largest uh expansion of internet access in Mexico I don't know if you know this because I I believe um we are not that good in marketing the things that are done well
uh but the thing is and and really the media is very much more interested in in marketing whatever goes wrong um but what we have been doing in Mexico in this past few years is dramatically expanding access to public internet and public internet sites the SE internet paratos project has been the largest Expansion Project of Information Technology in Mexico with thousands and thousands of kilometers of optic fiber installed and lightened um the installation of thousands of um Wireless antennas uh
the installation of thousands of of um free Wi-Fi hotspots and also um the um the dramatic expansion not just of the fiber that was set in but the illumination of fiber that was already there that wasn't being used um and we have been a large part of that and have been doing a large chunk of that and it's been you know immense amount of works but what really should be um out there is that you know and I don't believe this is just in Mexico um I'm sure everywhere the expansion of access to Inter
net has to be um happening right now so we really need to um look at that and how that is a tool to enabling education all over the world but at the same time we need to be asking of our policy makers what are you doing in terms of adapting the educational models and the Educational Tools so that people who recently is having access to information Technologies can really make the most out of that access right so we we don't need just the Technologies and the technological access we need accompan
ying policy and accompanying tools that allow people to make the most of um those tools because we have seen over and over again projects where people take technological devices to um marginalized communities and they're like this is it this is going to solve their lives and then the they evaluate the intervention and the results are zero right because there is and and bouncing off of um what Melissa was saying there is no Learning Without pedagogy if there isn't an accompanying policy an accomp
anying pedagogy that allows people to use those tools for learning then the results are going to be null thank you I don't know if there's um another question or comment on this issue in the public avoiding another one laptop per child Melissa says in the in the chat and this is super important to take into cons into consideration because it seems like especially with the covid-19 I saw town of programs where they thought like the solution to the on uh to the pandemic pandemic was just to give l
aptops away and the professors had no idea how to design an online experience for for its students for for his students and the students had no idea how to use these tools properly to achieve what they were aiming now the degree or the classes or the homeworks and and yeah Melissa you are right on this one avoiding another one leftt for children okay um I don't know if there's another question in the public or should we just jump to a open question edic do you have yes edic no something very int
eresting and something that U was mentioning bisa zilia this thinking out that this is not just how learning whatever the school is pushing to you is uh making the student really believe that they they can learn with the support of teacher and uh or without the support of teacher they can become like long life Learners that is something that we push a lot in inside KF School uh we have coaches academic coaches instead of teachers what is the difference the academic coach is is someone that is go
ing to support you in the way that you learn but he not going to be the one telling you what to learn in that way for sure there is a curricula that is designed but also we have to be thinking also to P the student to to go and to have more curiosity about the different things that they have to learn in that way is a it's a way of thinking it's a of also try to transform the education and uh I I I believe that this is very difficult to to to accomplish it but uh it's something that has to happen
in our system um K school is a global School in that way our our what we're trying to do is to really influence in all over Latin America in the US in different parts of the world to really think differently about how how is provided education in a different way but I highly agree with what hos has mentioned like you have to think to change the Dynamics of Education what Mela has has mentioned too about Wikipedia about using Wikipedia in different ways like really can help you just really reall
y quickly Adam me to monopolize the conversation but um really really quickly about that Eric we also need to get rid of this stupid idea that every kid needs to learn the same content at the same time and that means educating parents about that and good luck with that that's that's definitely a a challenge no um I think what Eddie you were you were commenting also reminded me a lot of the the experiences that we've had working with teachers um has showed us how important it is to to provide spa
ces and opportunities for teachers to be vulnerable Learners themselves in order to see that mindset mindset shift that requires integrating technology in the classroom um we see teachers you know all around the world it's it's a really stressful profession there there's a lot of um precarity prar that uh in the in the practice in in the in the professional networks in the way that teachers are compensated and also these constant demands that that you know every new government makes of them um a
nd and with the with the pandemic and the school closures that was just you know elevated to the top um and sometimes these demands are not paired with just the human element and and of building that psychological safety for teachers to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes and to learn from each other and then you know go out on the field uh you know more empowered uh more confident and and more just just was in a better disposition to guide their students through an through the same e
xperience that that they're going through Alan from angli school thank you very much and good afternoon to everyone so yeah um something interesting that I found out here it's uh much about for what you three are sharing to us and and the last point that Jos said about the uh the way that we have to to change uh the structure of a class because most of us are are used to I'm sorry something here uh some most of of the teachers want the student like working at the same time working in the same wa
y and and carrying them in the same topics uh during a CSE but this is something I'm changing my school so my school is an English school is not like um like a regular school but uh it's an extra classes that they can get and we are changing that we are trying to change this I tell the students that they need to change the chip that they are not working for a for just a score just a grade and also we we allow them to work at their own their own way the own speed so uh we provide what I think was
Melissa or Cecilia I don't remember well so we provide uh oh no it was Eric by the way so you said that um you provide a guide not a teacher right so we do the same we put we give to the students a guide who can be uh a part of the of the knowledge that they're getting in this process and we provide also the a platform or or digital resources that they can work on their own and we just help them to understand better what they're doing and practice their English um every time so when they come t
o class it's to it's a it's a time or it's an opportunity for them to uh to be engaged with other students and to have this uh this practice and also to solve all the questions that they had during the process at home or wherever they are working thank you very much Alan from engl school I think the hardest question will be is the people ready for this change of mindset because sometimes uh as we were just saying in this conversation previously the parents are the worst enemy for the implementat
ion of these new techniques new learning environments new challenges I I can hear my University students asking me about why they were giving the class instead of me because I will ask them to do research and to bring with the topic and then discuss it on the on the on the classroom and they will just ask me like teacher but that's your job I'm like this is the mindset that did been taught to them since they were in Primary School like the teacher come to the classroom and he just explains the t
opic and the the student is not part of this Dynamic of of being the protagonist of its own learning process and and this is the the question no the harder question would be is people ready to make this this change of mindset yes sesi um I mean just to add to what your U mentioning right now my dissertation for my masters was about teachers beliefs and their implementation and their um yeah ped logical practice and uh and I think that's the hardest thing to change teachers beliefs um and I think
from my research um I did research on on yeah in in universities and public universities in Mexico and I think teachers don't change their beliefs until they actually see that the new uh idea or the new method is actually working so it isn't until they see the results that they start implementing these other methods of teaching and it's really hard to change completely from a teacher let education to a student centered um learning uh process so I think it isn't until they actually see it workin
g that they start implementing more and more uh you know uh different methods and different approaches but it's uh from my research and what I learned it's it's the most difficult thing for teachers to actually change their their mindset and uh I think that's the real challenge there sorry Al you're on mute yeah I just saw that I'm still learning and to use the technology um there's a few minutes left I don't know if there's another comment or question either from our panelist or participants be
fore we end the session if I can just add uh from my experience as an English teacher as well and from Spanish and mandar and I I found that that when I asked my students to I I I used to ask them to spend at least an hour or two hours every day interacting with the language whether that was watching a movie on Netflix or just watching video or going on the supermarket and I don't know trying to uh practice with the language and trying to meet people from other backgrounds and and I would ask th
em to keep a log and I found that that's and I asked them to write down words that they learned or anything they learned new and uh I was amazed by how much they actually like their approach and their it it was very um I don't know fulfilling for them to actually learn them some something on their own uh so it wasn't just me going to the classroom and explaining grammar and I think that's what made her made it uh like longas learning not just me explaining a word in vocabulary so that's somethin
g that I really liked seeing their blogs and all the words that they were now putting into practice that they learned on their own so I think it's really important to give students uh the freedom and the opportunity uh for Independent Learning and then just come back to the classroom and and actually practice what their what they've learned and it's difficult to as a teacher not be the center of attention thank you Alan you have a comment oh yes is something about isia saying it's because um thi
s is a like a big issue that we have as teachers and mostly I mean maybe if you have if you have this experience in Mexico uh most of the people want to learn something uh but in a very short time and they they think they sometimes think that because they are subscribed or they are they are into a class into an English class they will they will learn English as well in that way without any any other effort right so what what Cilia does is that suggesting the students to go to practice anywhere t
hey are and given the tools they they can use anywhere so that is what what we do like you have an online online platform and you can use it online and offline and you can but you have to use I mean you have to spend time when you're home so don't wait for this class because this is a very little time even if you find that's an English school that can give you up to 10 hours uh a week uh in your English that would't be uh enough so you need even more and with this technological tools um it's it'
s a an excellent way to give them this opportunity I mean besides the socializing that they are doing every day I have a question okay um like this is up for anyone we are seeing shifts in public education systems right like if you look at how for example in Mexico the efforts of the um model for Thea Mikana if you look at you know the pedagogical and the theory of it it it looks amazing right theoretically so um how do you get that from theoretically great to a great implementation using the te
chnological tools at at hand basically how would you guys Envision that if at all um can I answer something on to your question um so when I was doing my dissertation I was reading a lot about um public education in Mexico and um so there's a lot of things to take into consideration this might be like a bit political but so around 70% of the people of the teachers that were registered as English teachers did not have the level of English required to actually teach it so it's really difficult bec
ause in theory it all should work and there's a lot of money put into education but in practice it's just a massive Gap so I think first of all we need to educate or um just have our teachers ready or certified to a point where they can actually teach so it's very I mean the same English teacher was you know used for biology and history and math so it's really difficult when you don't have those resources let alone you know Implement technology especially in you know primary like public schools
so I think first of all we need to tackle you know what's actually on paper and what's actually in practice um so it's really sad and I would get really frustrated um reading about this but um it's the reality so I think there's a lot of things to tackle in the education system in Mexico and I'm sure in Latin America as well I I agree with s's angle about or uh highlighting the the role of the teacher I think it it is it is a reality that you know with all of the systems change there are limited
resources there are limited budget there is limited time and there's a lot of pressure and I I think that there isn't like a one- siiz fits all kind of solution for sure in for education in general nowhere but if there is like a worthy investment that I think all around is investing in teachers um development in teachers uh capabilities in teachers agency um because you know investing in teachers is investing in like multiple generations to come and you know the the issue that that CI was was s
haring is I we also see it in Peru we see it in Nigeria in Yemen the more you know does it doesn't matter where in the world you go you will find this um of of teachers just not raising up rising up to the challenge um so so I think that investment is is is key for sure yeah recently I wrote an an article that was published in collaboration with the Harvard Club of Mexico and uh and it was for me was to study for like when I was writing the the article I was doing a lot of research uh and someth
ing that I st me like for example Finland that we speak a lot about Finland and the results what is happening and this is the best and everything but they started to work with the teachers in 1990 and it took them 10 years to take them to certain level and to provide all the different opportunities to all of them to start Shifting the mind like in the in 2000s to start thinking about a different way of teaching other was not something uh I believe that most of the education reforms that we apply
in different countries is like we want to see everything happening in one in one day well thinking that it's a process where you need to collaborate with a lot of different people secondly for example in Singapore the change of the curricula also to focus on stem it was just uh they instead of uh trying to become like experts in everything they were like no it's going to be just a stem it's going to be just a stem and they repeat so many times that everybody started to alienate to the same effo
rt in Korea in South Korea it was about how to make uh education like the goal of each one of the families in the way I was very surprised that the involvement of the family to to Really tackle like yes if your school is not PR enough your family has to come and support you in that way it changed the the the the way that people were thinking about education it was not just the responsibility of the school the responsibility of the teacher it was a whole responsibility of the whole of so many peo
ple in that way the the strategies and everything is not something that can happen like immediately I think that uh yes we have the new in Mexico the the NOA Mexicana like a new ways to see the curriculum but we have to see the whole ecosystem and how to tackle all the different things that have to happen around go ahead Alan yeah sorry because I this is a point that we just uh we were're just talking about uh the last week in and the school that I'm working on as a university so I'm like kind o
f the link with uh with the Ministry of Education to the school and they they let me know that that they we are gonna be into this new uh new system of education theana so it's gonna become into our schools this next August I don't know if you if you are aware of that uh so they want to in quaa so we are working with a curricula that is kind of more than 20 years old here here so they haven't they haven't changed it for a long period of time so uh when other where other states here in Mexico hav
e been changing through the reforms that that we get in Mexico so but just in qua this happens and now we are moving to H from a curricula from from the 2000 or something like that I don't remember well and they are moving to the NOAA Mexicana for this August so that will that will be a very hard transition you know so uh I don't know how would the the the school react to this and also how what what K said so the teachers are not ready for this so if the if the principals or the the school owner
s are not are not abled or not ready for this so imagine how is the impact act on the on the teachers and then in on our students so that will be a tough tough process if I could um add a little bit to that I I was involved in two different projects for um um yeah teacher development training programs and W it for sep and the British Council some years ago uh where they were looking into training uh Primary School teachers into improve improving their English language um proficiency level so the
y could Implement um yeah better teaching methodologies when when um yeah when in schools um and the government was investing a lot of money they were giving out scholarships for basically any Primary School teachers who would enroll but I think there weren't they weren't allow there wasn't a lot of um promotion to that so we would often get you know empty places because I think we just don't disseminate the information appropriately um years before that uh when I was a teacher in uh chihua I pa
rticipated as um uh yeah in the the sign of a program to um yeah Train English teachers from primary schools from uh hes and from Chihuahua and teachers would have didn't come but with minimum level of English and those were the ones who were teaching so they were um making them come on a Friday evening and Sunday morning sometimes sorry Saturday and sometimes Sunday mornings so they were already you know overloaded with work from grading and classes uh you know the the lesson design so I think
we need to take all the like everything into consideration all the all the responsibilities that teachers have when um trying to implement you know these training sessions so I didn't think they were as effective as you know the the people in the government would have liked them to be so I think there is a big effort there there's been an effort uh for some years now and uh hopefully this new model could start making a change uh and it's very frustating to see that there's a lot of money involve
d and invested in this and um it's going to take a while to to actually make a change Ed your hand is raised are you okay now everyone's with their hands raised okay so um we have a little time left we are about to close this and I will just add to to the conversation that um we we would need to see in more wider view education we have to think on the professors the teachers and their conditions to work because if we want to improve the quality if we want to be wider and achieve more we need the
m to be um to have a good life and and quality of life in in their in their conditions of of their of their work um we have to think of the facility we have to think of the access we have to think of the cultural challenge that it would be because I've just visited some schools in United States and there were uh schools that from the door will tell us like we do not use technology here because this is a classical school and so we need to see this and and this um cultural challenge as well in how
to introduce technology ology in our daily basis life and and that is not the enemy no I think it's a cultural change and change of mindset we don't have any time left this was a very interesting and very nourishing conversation I invite you all to keep inviting people our next program session is going to be on the on April the 11th with um Mimi Valencia which is co-founder from no which is one of the biggest um networks and and platforms that primary schools and secondary schools middle school
s uses for their K12 um programming in their classroom so share the invitation share the link to the registration and thank you panelists for being here today and all the participants that stay till the end thank you very much and this is how we close today's sessions Eric do you want to add something well thanks a lot to each one of you for being here thank you joose Melissa Cecilia thank thanks a lot for sharing your experience with us thanks a lot thank you thank you all and and happy birthda
y Ali it's your birthday one two three happy birthday you happy birthday to you happy birthday dear Alice happy birthday to you thank you very much thank you thank you good yes okay see you soon then good ass

Comments