Digital Education

Author: Chiara Pettarin, Project assistant, Banking Cooperation for Europe – GEIE

Digital transformation has changed society and the economy with an increasingly profound impact on everyday life, demonstrating the need to increase the digital capacity levels of education, training systems and institutions. Having digital skills and competences are becoming all more relevant, especially in the labor world.

Teachers and school leaders play a central role in the provision of high-quality, inclusive education for all students and learners. During the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers and trainers have rapidly adapted to school closure and switched to remote forms of teaching to ensure that effective learning could continue smoothly. Virtually, all future learning and jobs will require some level of digital skills however, nowadays, on average two in five Europeans aged 16-74 still lack these skills.

The European Commission is addressing the issue through its flagship policy initiative in this area: the Digital Action Plan (2021-2027). The Digital Action Plan is a renewed European Union policy initiative aimed at supporting the adaptation of education and training systems in member countries to high-quality, inclusive and accessible digital education. It can be considered as a call for greater cooperation at the European level on digital education to present opportunities for the education and training community (teachers, students).

A second initiative that is important to mention concerns the BRNE (Banks of educational digital resources). As one of the important aspects in preserving pedagogical continuity, during and after the confinement period due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the French government enabled access to 17 banks of educational digital resources for schools. These banks provide access to thousands of pages of content, services for dissemination and interaction between teachers and students. They also allow the creation of lessons and the monitoring and evaluation of skills acquired.

Tech 2030 is a program developed in England, in which more than 11 countries are members. It offers contextualized digital professional development courses that are simple to use and scale, assisting instructors working in the world’s most demanding environment to teach better. The teaching made available by this program can be used individually, as well as by institutions that want to offer a rich and varied educational experience to all their teachers, they are in fact accessible on any device for a meaningful learning experience. Feedback received from their users shows that 89% say courses are engaging and relevant.

England is the birthplace of one other program called “The World’s largest lesson”. They advocate for the incorporation of Sustainable Development Goals into classroom instruction, so that students may contribute to a brighter future for all. It focuses on producing creative tools for educators and learning experiences centered precisely on young people that develop skills and motivation.

In addition to the programs mentioned above, we should also highlight the existence of several apps designed and made to create interactive images so as to engage pupils and get them excited about a new topic. We see an example of this with the ThingLink app, which is precisely a multimedia platform that allows you to create interesting content by adding multimedia links to photos and videos.

In conclusion, Digital Education proposes the integration of digital languages and tools within an educational scenario in correlation with other educational strategies that can renew themselves by increasing their benefits.