The Digital Turn: Empowering the Caribbean’s Teachers

The Covid-19 pandemic forced teachers to implement blended and distance learning modalities, often without sufficient guidance, training or resources. Improving teachers’ digital competences is key to the teaching profession, to design quality distance learning as well as to their own professional development. 

In Latin America and the Caribbean, UNESCO and Blackboard Academy and the Caribbean Center of Educational Planning (UWI-CCEP) at the University of the West Indies have partnered to improve digital literacy training for teachers in the Caribbean with financial support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The project is based on a train-the-trainer model with resources for a self-sustaining professional development program. The goal is to train at least 10,000 teachers in digital skills and teaching strategies. With additional support from UNICEF in Jamaica, 7,000 teachers in Jamaica will be able to participate in the training.

The webinar The Digital Turn: Empowering the Caribbean’s Teachers will feature key elements of the project in the Caribbean to draw lessons from the regional experience and highlight the need and unpack the complexities of teacher training on the pedagogical use of ICTs. That experience will work as a starting point to connect the challenges of teacher training on ICTs at a global level, referencing the different needs and strategies implemented on ICTs. Interpretation in English, Spanish and French will be available.

Objectives:

• Showcase key lessons and opportunities from the train-the-trainers project in the Caribbean.
• Highlight the need and complexities of teacher training on the pedagogical use of ICTs drawing lessons from different experiences and the train-the-trainers project in the Caribbean.
• Explain the UNESCO ICT competency framework; exploring the 6 areas to be addressed and its different levels by emphasizing the relevance of developing ICT skills on teachers throughout their career.
• Showcase the mapping of ICT competencies offered to teachers by teacher training course elaborated by the teacher development section at UNESCO HQ.
• Share experience on teacher training on ICTs in the different countries in the Caribbean and with regional organizations such as CARICOM, Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), and explore the possible synergies with other strategies on a global level (for example from the Global Teacher Campus).
• Share experiences with Abuja office as a similar teacher training project with Blackboard is being developed.

REGISTER HERE.

Provisional agenda:

Credit of the photo used for the visual: UNESCO Kingston