The inaugural T4 Education Teacher Tech Summit is gearing up to welcome more than 20,000 educators through its virtual ‘doors’ this weekend (Saturday 17 April), bringing teachers from all over the world together to acknowledge and celebrate their pivotal role in promoting and developing the digital learning tools that have helped education continue throughout the COVID-19 crisis.
The coronavirus outbreak is the biggest challenge the sector has experienced in living memory on an international scale. Data from the UNESCO Global Education Coalition revealed that 63m primary- and secondary-level teachers have been impacted by COVID-related restrictions forcing schools to fully or partially close since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
Schools across the globe had to adopt remote teaching methods to minimise disruption and allow learning to continue, accelerating the uptake of digital technologies in schools around the world. As such, the pandemic has driven an explosion in best practice sharing across the teaching workforce, on top of heightening levels of innovation, creativity and collaboration in schools.
Providing a platform where educators can share their expertise and experience in adopting and using various edtech tools and solutions, the T4 Education Teacher Tech Summit will focus on the following themes:
- Designing learning for hybrid environments
- Engaging learners online
- How to create good digital content
- Assessing learning online
- Ensuring no one is left behind in online learning
Attendees will hear insights from inventive frontline teachers who have driven a digital transformation within their schools throughout this difficult time. They will be joined by globally-recognised sector leaders, such as Andreas Schleicher, director for education and skills at the OECD; Dr Sara Hennessey, co-leader of the Cambridge Educational Dialogue Research Group (CEDiR) at the University of Cambridge, and co-director of the Edtech Hub; and Ross Morrison McGill, founder-CEO of Teacher Toolkit.
“It’s been an incredible and seismic year for teachers worldwide,” said Dr Hennessey, “with an astonishing acceleration of digital technology use in education…We’ve seen schools employ a range of available low- and high-tech tools in creative ways, offering some glimmers of hope concerning what’s possible to ensure all learners globally can make progress. Teachers and their professional development are absolutely pivotal to this.”
“We’ve seen schools employ a range of available low- and high-tech tools in creative ways, offering some glimmers of hope concerning what’s possible to ensure all learners globally can make progress. Teachers and their professional development are absolutely pivotal to this” – Dr Sara Hennessy
The event is free for delegates to attend and takes place between 12–3pm GMT this Saturday (17 April). T4 Education will stream the event live and in English, with subtitles available in the following additional languages: Arabic, Bengali, French, Hindi, Malay, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish and Urdu. Click here to register.
Vikas Pota, founder of T4 Education, commented: “The past year has been an incredible journey for teachers worldwide…Throughout, we have seen amazing collaboration amongst teaching peers in every country, where they have played a leading role in creating the solutions to the unprecedented challenges they have needed to overcome. The results are not only benefitting millions of children and whole communities worldwide, but also the profession.
“However, much of this work has been informal. Our Teacher Tech Summit is designed specifically to provide a platform for teachers to share their knowledge from the past year and their techniques with a global audience. This way, together we can showcase the amazing work of teachers and share best practice that will support the global community.”
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