Resetting Education and Training for the Digital Age

One of the challenges of digitalisation are issues related to privacy and security of users of digital tools and the right to equality and non-discrimination, which must be identified and addressed accordingly. To ensure a high-performance digital education ecosystem, we need digitally competent and confident educators, high-quality content, user-friendly tools and secure platforms that respect privacy and ethical standards, as already defined in the Digital Education Action Plan 2021-2027.

For better and more inclusive education in this unpredictable and highly dynamic world of digitalisation and innovation, we need to improve educational opportunities for all and ensure that no one is left behind in preparation for the future. We must also not forget the potential negative consequences: social isolation and its impact on well-being.

Digital education and artificial intelligence will therefore be the main topics of the two-day conference on education, which will take place during the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The conference will focus on the digital transformation of learning and teaching and will offer an insight into the challenges it poses. The objectives of the conference are in line with the objectives of the European Education Area by 2025 and will also address the need to increase digital competences and bridge the digital divide in tools and frameworks.

Resetting Education and Training for the Digital Age

The conference will open up the space for discussion on the opportunities and challenges of digitalisation education among various stakeholders – from practitioners and researchers to decision makers. We want to encourage the cooperation between the stakeholders, to identify, share and disseminate good practices, to link national and international digital education initiatives, and to support cross-sectoral cooperation and new models for the exchange of digital learning content. By stimulating the debate, we will break down silo structures and contribute to dialogue between different experts as well as to the search for common innovative and effective approaches. We will provide guidance to professionals, both teachers and school leaders, and offer solutions for present and future challenges. In this way, we want to support digitalisation in education and training through processes and content. At the same time, by discussing and making suggestions which will be formed in various workshops, we work towards recommendations on online, distance and blended learning, to be adopted by the European Commission.

The conference will host existing – and future – representatives of primary and secondary education, and practical examples will originate from the entire educational vertical, including tertiary education. It will provide views on what the key issues for the future of the digitalisation of education for its participants are and contribute key messages to the ongoing Conference on the Future of Europe. It will be attended by teachers, researchers and decision-makers from the Member States of the European Union, senior officials of the European Commission and national representatives in the fields of education, training and innovation.

Parallel to the conference, the main stage event of DigiEduHack will be hosted by the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union in cooperation with the International Research Centre on Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI) under the auspices of UNESCO. DigiEduHack is an EIT initiative under the European Commission’s Digital Education Action Plan, led by EIT Climate-KIC and coordinated by Aalto University. It will take place on 9 and 10 of November and its snapshots will also be fed-in the conference on its second day.

The participation of young people presenting their vision of the school of the future and of the use of new technologies will give the conference additional value and weight.