BDT Director Doreen Bogdan-Martin participated in a panel on “Promising Innovations to Transform Education", as part of the International Day of Education celebration organized by UNESCO and the Global Partnership for Education.
Other distinguished panellists included H.E. Maria Victoria Angulo Gonzalez, Minister of Education of Colombia; Mr Ranjitsinh Disale, Global Teacher Prize winner; Mr Oleg Figlin, Vice President for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Blackboard; and Mr Otto Orondaam, Founder of Slum2School.
Ms Bogdan-Martin spoke on ITU and UNICEF's Giga project, that seeks to connect every school to the internet, and every young person to information, opportunity and choice. She highlighted three ways in which Giga is bringing innovation to education and helping pave the road towards more resilient and inclusive education systems.
First, Giga is pioneering innovations in mapping connectivity demand. Ms Bogdan-Martin explained that the project is helping countries around the world map their previously unmapped schools, including by leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to improve mapping capabilities. Over 800,000 schools have now been mapped, using existing ITU mapping data and national data banks.
Second, she described Giga's innovative financing. This includes using the principles of “demand aggregation", lowering the cost of infrastructure, and risk diversification, to support leaders to develop sustainable financial models for universal digital access.
Third, Ms Bogdan-Martin spoke on Giga's innovation around partnerships. She said, ''bridging the digital divide will be all about collaboration,'' and explained that Giga serves as a powerful example in its own right, given the incredible partnerships taking place to support the project, for example with: Ericsson, Softbank Investment Advisors, Dubai Cares, UNESCO, Huawei, and the Broadband Commission Working Group on Digital Learning.
She emphasized ''Education systems need to be transformed to become more agile, more resilient, and more innovative. We need school systems to be shock absorbent and crisis respondent, and we believe Giga provides the global platform that will help us achieve that goal.''
