News
Increasing teachers’ ICT competency through open educational resources
UNESCO supported the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture to hold a workshop on Harnessing the Use of Open Educational Resources (OER) for the ICT Competency Framework for Teachers (ICT CFT) in Jakarta, Indonesia on 27 June 2013. The workshop focused on the potential of OER for supporting the rollout of the ICT Competency Framework for Teachers and its potential to contribute to Indonesia’s educational goals for building knowledge societies.
The Executive Chairman of the Indonesian National Commission for UNESCO, Prof. Dr. H. Arief Rachman, highlighted in his opening remarks the importance of the development of OER-based teacher training tools for ICT integration, which makes the project activities relevant to real world problems. Prof. Dr. Rachman also underscored the need to ensure that Indonesia’s 2.7 million teachers are properly trained to integrate ICT effectively in their teaching. This UNESCO-supported workshop contributed to the Indonesian Government’s objectives to promote the use of ICT for the construction of knowledge societies, ensuring that teachers have the necessary ICT skills for quality teaching and learning.
The important work that Indonesia has undertaken in developing a policy on OER and teacher training standards for ICT CFT (in cooperation with Intel) was underscored by participants as an important basis for the development of project activities.
The discussions focused on the priority area of technical vocational education at secondary level. In this regard, it was agreed to focus the project activities on teacher education materials in this area.
The workshop gathered participants from the Ministry of Education, non-governmental organizations and the World Bank. Private sector partners involved in the development of ICT CFT, namely CISCO, INTEL and Microsoft, were also invited to participate in the event.
This activity is part of UNESCO’s continued efforts to promote the application of ICT to enhance the quality of and access to education, including the stimulation of production, sharing and access to open educational resources (OER). After the adoption by UNESCO of the Paris OER Declaration in 2012, the implementation of this activity in Indonesia, Kenya and Oman is supported by the Hewlett Foundation.
