The Mobile Learning Week 2018, held at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris (France) on 26-28 March 2018, has become a venue for forging promising partnerships, including for UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (UNESCO IITE). On 27 March 2018, UNESCO IITE and Weidong Cloud Education Group from China signed an agreement on the implementation of the joint project “Building Future Schools with ICT Competency and Innovative Pedagogy”.
Representatives of the UNESCO Headquarters, UNESCO IITE, Weidong Cloud Education Group, as well as the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation and the Permanent Delegations of the People’s Republic of China to UNESCO and of the Russian Federation to UNESCO participated in the Signing Ceremony. Mr Svein Osttveit, Director of Executive Office of the UNESCO Education Sector, praised the event as a fine example of the partnership between UNESCO and the private sector.
The Project Agreement, signed by the Director of UNESCO IITE Mr. Tao Zhan and the President of the Weidong Cloud Education Group Mr. Wang Duanrui, puts forth implementation of activities in six pilot countries: Mauritius, Namibia and Nigeria in Africa, and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia. The aim of the Project is to investigate new ICT-based educational environment and to support new competencies of the 21st century schools by identifying, piloting and supporting emerging approaches and practices used in technology-mediated school education. UNESCO ASPnet and innovative schools in the targeted countries will be involved into the project.