Fundación Telefónica inaugurated the 4th Binational Education Congress last June with the aim of bringing educators more educational tools to allow them to make use of technology in education. The congress was attended by 75 educators from Guatemala and El Salvador.

“Our goal is to give them guidelines, advice and tools that they can use to work a little faster and keep up with young people and children who are asking for new ways of learning”, explained José Antonio Fernández Valbuena, Director of Fundación Telefónica El Salvador at the inauguration of the event.

“The world of education should advance at the same pace as the digital era and culture”.

Fernández Valbuena highlighted that teachers and others “cannot go on teaching the same material they did 20 years ago – the world of education should advance at the same pace as the digital era and culture”.

At the two-day session, the educators learned techniques that will allow them to incorporate digital culture and information and communication technologies (ICT) into the classroom in order to take education into the 21st century.

“I believe it’s important that educators have clear ideas and aren’t afraid of self-training”, said Carlo Monroy, Educational Programmes Manager for Microsoft Multi Country America. Monroy also identified six trends that point towards a real transformation in 21st century education: Innovating, doing more with less, customising learning, revolutionising content, committing to change, and finally employability and entrepreneurship.

The educators also shared educational experiences centred around acquiring digital skills, flearning about digital natives and what tools to use to educate them, and also spoke about innovative methodologies to boost education.

The Aulas Fundación Telefónica (AFT) teams held various workshops and dynamics aimed at helping educators to develop their use of IT tools to educate digital natives. For this, the AFT Guatemala team introduced various dynamics, using the Scamper method to motivate the educators to identify different ways of using apps such as Google Maps, Google Earth and Skitch in class.

The El Salvador team set challenges that taught the educators how to creatively use some of the tools provided by technology, such as creating a blog, opening a chat, going on a virtual journey, creating infographs, and so on.
Another of the topics dealt with at the Binational Congress was ICT as a way of managing schools, as well as how to apply ethics and responsibility to digital culture.