Free inaugural T4 Education Teacher Tech Summit - all educators welcome

Sihle Ngesi-Magubane, T4 Country Ambassador and Chief of Staff at Jakes Gerwel Fellowship

The Covid-19 outbreak sparked a major crisis in the teaching profession around the world. According to the Unesco Global Education Coalition, since the start of the pandemic, an estimated 63 million primary and secondary teachers have been affected by restrictions forcing schools to fully or partially close.

For many of these educators, trends in remote learning have been dramatically accelerated as schools adopt and adapt new practices to ensure their pupils continue to receive a high-quality education.

The resulting disruption and rapid change has ignited a worldwide digital learning revolution with teachers on its frontline, embracing new tools and discovering new methods to deliver their lessons. During the pandemic, there has also been an explosion in teachers sharing their best practices, promoting greater innovation and creativity through informal collaboration.

While the pandemic has posed huge challenges, the crisis offers an opportunity to transform and reimagine education with teachers leading the digital learning revolution.

Event details

The T4 Teacher Tech Summit will bring educators together from around the world and is designed to provide a platform for them to share their expertise and experiences using educational technologies. The event will focus on the following themes:

• Designing learning for hybrid environments
  
• Engaging learners online
  
• How to create good digital content
  
• Assessing learning online
  
• Ensuring no-one is left behind in online learning

Attendees will get the chance to hear from pioneering frontline teachers who have led the digital revolution in their schools, as well as from renowned world leaders like the OECD’s Director for Education and Skills, Andreas Schleicher; Dr Sara Hennessy from the University of Cambridge; and, Ross Morrison McGill, the Founder and CEO of Teacher Toolkit.

T4 recognises that it is teachers who will be key to unlocking the global education recovery from this crisis. During the summit, T4 has also launched a comprehensive global survey – the first of its kind that will learn directly from frontline teachers all over the world about their professional experiences over the past year, and how they have mobilised to overcome the numerous challenges this uncharted period has generated.

The event is free of charge and will take place online on Saturday, 17 April between 12pm – 3pm GMT. T4 Education will stream the event live and in English, with subtitles in the following additional languages: Arabic, Bengali, French, Hindi, Malay, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish and Urdu.

To register your attendance, follow this link.

Knowledge sharing

Vikas Pota, Founder of T4 Education, said: “Throughout [the pandemic], we have seen amazing collaboration amongst teaching peers in every country, where they have played a leading role in creating the solutions to the unprecedented challenges they have needed to overcome. The results are not only benefitting millions of children and whole communities worldwide, but also the profession.”

“However, much of this work has been informal. Our Teacher Tech Summit is designed specifically to provide a platform for teachers to share their knowledge from the past year and their techniques with a global audience. This way, together we can showcase the amazing work of teachers and share best practice that will support the global community.”

Sihle Ngesi-Magubane, T4 Country Ambassador and Chief of Staff at Jakes Gerwel Fellowship commented: “Teaching in South Africa needs to be reimagined for digital and remote learning as schooling faces an inevitable future in which blended learning will become more commonplace. Most of our teachers are not specifically trained in this area and lacked the support to make this transition successfully. Now that we have a little more breathing room, we should be intentional in developing these skills for all teachers in the system.

“T4, and the partners that collaborate with the programme, are crucial to enabling the ongoing development of teachers. This year’s event will be one of the most impactful, given the nuances teachers have faced in the last year and how they have had to learn from each other with regards to how best practices can be shaped across the world to drive impact in each classroom where needed.

“Teaching during a pandemic is not simply about delivering content online, it's about harnessing the potential of digital channels, online technologies and resources to thrive and deliver effective teaching and impactful learning whether in a remote, online or hybrid teaching environment.”