The World Smart Education Conference 2023 was held on August 18-20, 2023 in Beijing, China, under the theme of “Education Transformation and Data Governance”.
The Conference brought together experts, scholars and front-line teachers from education, science and technology, and business circles to discuss the strategy and promotion path of digital transformation of education, explore the construction of regional smart education ecology and learning society, and share new theories, technologies, views and achievements of smart education.
In addition to the remote participation of Dr. Mohamed Ould Amar, Director-General of ALECSO, in the opening session of the Conference, Dr. Mohamed Jemni, Director of ICT Department, delivered a presentation entitled : “Promoting Smart Learning Environments in the Arab World,” in which he highlighted the main projects launched by ALECSO in the field of education technologies and artificial intelligence and its applications in education.
These projects include :
- The Arab Code Week, which aims to spread the culture of programming in Arab societies, especially among teachers, students, and all those interested in modern technologies. It seeks to provide an exciting learning environment that helps to teach the basics of programming to young people, and to offer them wide prospects to explore new disciplines, such as artificial intelligence. Two editions of the Arab Code Week were organized in 2021 and 2022. The second edition, held under the theme of “Artificial Intelligence and Environmental Protection,” saw a large participation in the main competition and side events, with over two million participants from Arab countries, including 50,000 teachers from 6000 schools;
- The project to establish a unified Arab Blockchain-based certificate authentication system, approved by the 18th Conference of Arab Ministers of Higher Education and Scientific Research, held in Algeria in December 2021;
- The ALECSO NFT Platform, an educational Blockchain-based platform that simulates global NFT marketplaces to display educational products or any digital content produced by Arab youth. It seeks to encourage young people to produce high-quality and highly competitive works that are traded on the Platform using the ALECSO virtual currency.
The Conference was organized by Beijing Normal University in cooperation with the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education, and with the support of the Global Smart Education Network (GSENet), whose founding members are :
- Beijing Normal University (BNU)
- UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (IITE) Commonwealth of Learning (COL)
- International society for Technology in Education (ISTE)
- Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO)
- Southeast Asia Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO)
The Conference adopted the GSENet Beijing Declaration on Smart Education Strategies. The Declaration was adopted by the founding members of GSNet with the aim of promoting follow-up actions of the UN Transforming Education Summit held in 2022 and achieving SDG4 and UNESCO Education 2030 Agenda. It proceeded from recognition that cutting-edge technologies and tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Metaverse, Digital Twin), when integrated with smart education planning and practice, will be an important engine to reshape teaching and learning and transform the education system.
The Declaration includes a number of significant recommendations designed to promote the adoption and implementation of smart education all over the world.
GSENet Beijing Declaration on Smart Education Strategies
