The presence of Thomas Van Cauwenberghe, Station Chief at the Belgian ‘Edtech Station’ of the European EdTech Alliance, ensured constructive discussion about the evolving role Edtech has in education publishing. We heard from individual members from Italy and the UK about the evolution of physical and digital educational resources in their countries. AI adoption by teachers is advancing, and a mix of physical and digital resources is a clear preference with pupils engaging increasingly with online content linked to a physical resource. But OERs (open educational resources) are not a panacea, and of increasing concern are government interventions in education around the world.
The presence of colleagues from Africa (Samuel Kolawole, the Chair of the African EPF) and Latin America (Ramiro Villalba, Chair of the LatAm EPF) also meant that our converations covered many different global realities of education. AI was obviously part of that mix and earlier in the week, the OECD held a webinar on Exploring Effective Uses of Generative AI in Education and published a report on the same topic.
This was Brian Gilsenan’s last meeting as Chair of the EPF. His successor will be announced soon.