[Tim Unwin]
Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London Chairholder, UNESCO Chair in ICT4D


*Introduction


The COVID-19 pandemic has created an opportunity for governments across the world to reconsider how digital technologies can best be used to support resilient education systems that serve everyone in their societies, and especially the poorest and most marginalized. The pandemic has highlighted the existing failings of many education systems, but also the potential that the wise use of technologies has for improving these systems and making them more resilient. All too often, though, the use of digital technologies has increased inequalities rather than reduced them.


This presentation tells the story of the conceptualization, realization and publication of a report produced within six months in the second half of 2020 entitled Education for the most marginalised post-COVID-19: guidance for governments on the use of digital technologies in education and funded by the UK’s FCDO and the World Bank. This was based on the involvement of 87 people from 34 countries in consensus building workshops to identify the most important things that governments can do to ensure that the most marginalised will indeed benefit from the use of digital technologies.


It suggests that there are five things that a government must do once a holistic vision has been crafted that is committed to using digital technologies to create a resilient education system that provides education and learning for all:
•Create a whole society approach that delivers equity in education;
•Enable access for all to digital technologies by providing resilient funded infrastructures for learning, funded by Central Government rather than Ministries of Education
•Be context specific at all times, especially in terms of the technologies used in education and the content crafted for learners;
•Ensure that appropriate pedagogies are used in the practices of teaching and learning; and
•Use digital technologies wisely and safely.




[Byung-ro Moon]
Computer Engineering, Seoul National University Professor


*Introduction


One aspect of current technical civilization is that machines dominate human beings in the competition of innovation. Human beings of hunter-and-gatherer’s body encountered this civilization era all of a sudden. In the field of labor, the speed of finding ways of saving labor surpasses that of finding new utilization of labor. Brynjolfsson and MaCafee named this phenomenon as technical unemployment. Occupation crises have been repeated in human history whenever new techniques appeared. Representative examples are Britain’s textile industry of 17th century and the decline of cottage industry, and the advent of computer of 20th century and the decline of routine jobs.These new techniques, however, eventually generated more diverse new jobs over time. Current labor crisis will undergo the same process.
Education plays a key role in this process. It’ll not be possible not to add any formal education after completing one’s final degree. Most people may have to add at least ten new subjects even after graduating one’s final school. The efficiency would be more and more important in this process. Fortunately, data are abundant and keep being accumulated, which provides rich soil for research and development in the field of optimization. Techniques are ready for the design of study path, personalized education, intelligent auto evaluation, and educator-educatee matching. Recent advance of recommendation and targeting will help people to select objects which they cannot find for themselves, and will improve the effectiveness of the education process.
In this talk, I cover the issues of near-future education in the perspective of an optimization expert.




[Seejun Chang]
Digital Education Policy Division, Korea Education & Research Information Service (KERIS) Director


*Introduction


TBA