UNESCO MGIEP's TECH 2018 concludes with the adoption of ‘Vizag Declaration’

NEW DELHI, NOVEMBER 23: Transforming Education Conference for Humanity (TECH) 2018, the second edition of UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP)'s international conference in association with the State Government of Andhra Pradesh concluded by drawing a blueprint for harnessing pedagogical possibilities opened up by digital technologies.

The three-day conference was aimed to showcase the role of games and digital learning in enabling a shift from “transmissive pedagogies” to “transformative pedagogies” to create peaceful and sustainable societies. TECH 2018 saw participation of nearly 1,500 people from over 50 countries.

The most significant outcome of the conference was the Vizag Declaration on Guidelines for Digital Learning, adopted against the backdrop of Intelligent Global Hub on Digital Pedagogy (IGHDP) or iHub announced last year. Deliberated upon by senior policy makers and ministers from 9 countries, domain experts in AI, data scientists, neuroscientists, education and developmental psychologists, researchers, curriculum experts, digital instruction designers, game designers, education technology companies, the Declaration calls for establishing standards of digital learning resources to determine digital products best suited to the educational needs of 21st century learners. The Declaration will be presented to the General Conference of UNESCO to be held in Paris in 2019 for consideration by its 193 Member States.

Present at the occasion, Ganta Srinivasa Rao Minister, Human Resources Development Minister of Andhra Pradesh said, “We in Andhra Pradesh have welcomed UNESCO MGIEP’s collaboration to create the Intelligent Global Hub on Digital Pedagogy (IGHDP) at Vizag as we see the potential of digital learning to create a large number of jobs, international collaborations, accelerate innovation and produce a highly skilled talent pool to service the knowledge economy. Globally, the overall EdTech market is expected to hit $252 billion by 2020 with Asia Pacific, North America, and Western Europe being the largest markets. These prospects would make AP well placed with this iHUB to be a leader in answering that demand.”

Dr. Anantha K. Duraiappah, Director, UNESCO MGIEP stated, “Vizag declaration has a ring to it and it would be great to see this dream getting realised. With these guidelines, we expect to generate valuable content specifications that will lean towards tangible outcomes.”

Ganta Srinivas Rao and Dr Anantha Duraiappah concluded the conference by inviting the attendees to participate in TECH 2019 at Visakhapatnam, the dates for which were announced to be 9th-11th of December 2019.