Education and policy leaders drawn from Middle East, Africa and Turkey, recently, met at the inaugural BETT Middle East Leadership Forum held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates with the sole aim of achieving best practice guidance for (education) successful system change.

The 2-day Forum was unique in many ways, networking opportunities and inspiration from the world of education, especially, following world class contents shared by Microsoft Worldwide Education (MWE), the principal partners to #BETT_MiddleEast.

The thinking revolves round adopting technology to help improve education and learning, create opportunity, and raise living standards for people around the world, particularly in Middle East, Africa and Turkey.

Meanwhile, the African-America Institute “State of Education in Africa Report 2015” supports United Nation’s statistics which shows: “The Africa region has experienced an impressive increase in the number of students enrolled in primary school. Between 1990 and 2012, the number of children enrolled in primary schools more than doubled, from 62 million to 149 million children.

Unfortunately and “despite tremendous gains in primary school enrollment, no African country has achieved universal primary education.

“For a country to achieve universal primary education, all children must have completed a full course of primary schooling.

“Globally, 58 million children of primary school age were out of school in 2012. Of that number, 38 million children were in Africa. About half of all out-of-school African children will never step foot in a school in their lifetime”.

Anthony Salcito, vice president, Education for Microsoft Corporation’s Worldwide Public Sector organization, reminded the delegates, “This is a time in history that is very critical to push hard and drive for innovation and change in schools”. So we need to challenge each other to push harder and faster for the changes needed in the education sector. – See more: http://www.nigeriacommunicationsweek.com.ng/e-guest/tech-ll-fuel-changes-in-mea-education-sector-salcito#sthash.eGe61uhR.dpuf.

On this premise, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek key takeways from the Forum, are essentially summarized in Microsoft Education Framework christened “Ten Critical Components of School Transformation” (www.microsoft.com/en-us/education/school-leaders).

This decision was informed by Salcito’s presentation, who unequivocally, urged leaders from these regions to embrace the ten components of transformation that fall into two categories, relying squarely on Leadership and policy. The rest point at enhancing 21st century pedagogy

Feeling more educated on digitalizing education contents and localizing same, Mohammed Mahmud, a member of the Nigerian Parliament, even said, “What we learnt here are eye opening and impactful; as we return home (Nigeria), I will put up a team to assess how we can localize some of the things we learnt here. Truly and as advised by one of the speakers, we may not be able to do everything same time, but we will be doing ourselves a disservice if we don’t act now.

Leadership & Policy:

1.Establishing A Vision
2.Microsoft drums it loud that before school systems can embark on change they need a clear vision. Why? Defining one is complex because it touches on the perception, attitudes and everyday work of multiple stakeholders; involves the reallocation of fiscal and cultural resources; and disturbs the status quo. Thus, thrust of this anchores on helping policy leaders with examples from successful systems, and best practice to develop a cycle that includes a vision, strategic planning, implementation, and reflections on progress.

2. Partnerships and Capacity Building for Change
Microsoft’s message is that a public-private education partnership has the potential to be a significant catalyst for systemic change. This was even put forward by AAI, among other things, “Completing primary education helps to lay the foundation for building a skilled and better-educated workforce in Africa.

3. Organizational Capacity, Strategic Planning and Quality Assurance
A successful change strategy requires professional development, feedback and support for teachers along with a well-researched monitoring and evaluation system.

Professor Kate Omenugha, commissioner for Education, Anambra State, Nigeria nods in agreement to the aforementioned thus, “Coming back to ICT and looking at the curriculum in Nigeria, you need to start ICT teaching and learning, from the primary school…So the first thing was to demystify the new teaching tool for them. The past administration keyed into the Microsoft Academy which Anambra State is one of the 42 places across the globe where the Academy is being used. What does that mean to us? We have access to training facilities and certification of our teachers”.

4. Inclusion, Accessibility and Sustainability
Microsoft points to a direction that a commitment to personalized learning includes providing technology solutions that empower all students. We dare to say that for Africa to achieve the goal of raising globally competitive students, there is urgent need to personalized system of learning”. As Salcito said, this approach helps to build innovation, confident level & critical thinking of a child, and pays off in way of skill sets to meet challenges in today’s workplace.

21st Century Pedagogy
5. Personalized Learning
Personalized learning has the potential to overcome socio-economic, time and space limitations and maximize educational opportunities Clear guidelines from UNESCO present a roadmap towards individualized education.
UNESCO highlighted that “‘one size fits all’ approach to acquiring knowledge in today’s educational institutions does not successfully meet the needs of individuals of a knowledge society…”

6. Teacher and Leader Capacity
The need for “Building teacher and leader capacity is vital to successful transformation”, cannot be over emphasized.

7. Curriculum and Assessment
Responsive and creative use of technology is a powerful way to improve curriculum and assessment outcomes for students. For instance, exploring the allure of computer gaming makes learning fun.

“Educational games may be able to help circumvent major problems plaguing classrooms by placing students in a frame of mind that is conducive to learning rather than worrying about how smart they look,” said Paul O’Keefe, an NYU postdoctoral fellow at the time of the study and now at Stanford University’s Department of Psychology. It is imperatives that curriculum in the Nigeria’s education system be re-assessed to create room for digitization of the necessary areas.

8. Developing A Learning Community
A community of practice can provide a structure for fostering growth and development amongst peers to enhance learning goals.

9. Physical Learning Environments
The Microsoft Education Framework also contains the fact that anytime, anywhere virtual learning spaces are the manifestation of the connections that are redefining the 21st century school-community dynamics.

Thus, from whole-of-school transformation to mobile and smart learning solutions, these technology-enabled environments cultivate innovative learning and bring together all stakeholders in the building of a single ‘mega-learning space’.

10. Designing Technology for Effective And Efficient Schools
Combining cloud solutions that manage infrastructure with services and learning allows schools to operate more effectively.

Microsoft promised that not only does the technology they have support the running of a school, it also maximizes the potential of all students.

Thus, by unlocking and understanding student data educators can solve critical teaching challenges, improving learning outcomes and graduation rates. Reference: microsoft.com/en-us/education/school-leaders/school-systems-planning/components.aspx

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