Post #1 Network of UNESCO Chairs in ICT and Education: Basics pillars for Lifelong Learning

These days UNIR contributes to the V International Conference of UNESCO IITE and the Network of UNESCO Chairs on ICT in Education and Innovative Pedagogy  under the umbrella of “UNESCO Chairs Partnership on ICTs use in Education”, hosted by the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education.

Delegates from Russia, Dubai, France, China, The Netherlands, Germany, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Israel, USA, and other countries. UNIR is the only delegate from Spain, and the only online university at the conference, via UNIR Research (//research.unir.net) and the UNESCO Chair on eLearning, at Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR, http://www.unir.net).

The opening speech comes from Dr. Mazoor Al Awar, from the Smart University, in Dubai. His university, from which he is the Rector of, empowers a Lifelong Learning (LLL) strategy through 3 pillars: Languages, STEM, Transversal competencies. Languages support learners to achieve linguistic competencies in Arabic and English, mainly, so that their students can retrieve and interpret information and learning resources directly from the original sources. STEM is focused on supporting knowledge and learning on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, in order to improve these basic subjects across curricula. And finally, Transversal competencies must be strengthen and supported cross-subject, cross-topic; reading, expressing, writing, discussing, and basic maths, become the basic core for any further development.

Thanks to these three pillars, Smart University supports their students on a lifelong learning basis. There is no doubt that these fundamental layers cannot be neglected if we want to reach upper layers of knowledge and development. We should strengthen the basics, so that the advance features can be elicited, deployed and developed.

By: Daniel Burgos. June 1^st, 2015