Regional Seminar for UNESCO Resource Distribution and Training Centres

Regional Seminar for UNESCO Resource Distribution and Training Centres USM Campus, Penang, Malaysia, 9-11 October 2013 more information On behalf of Maldives National University, MNU, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to UNESCO and USM for the opportunity to participate in this seminar for RTDCs. I met great people with wonderful innovative minds in the conference and got lot of ideas on the 21st Century learning which I hope I could make use of to make my learning and teaching more interactive, interesting and meaningful for the students. Also, I am enthusiastic to start the workshops here in Maldives. As I work in the distance and open learning center and with blended mode of courses, I believe the information I gathered from the seminar are of immense use. Thank you for accepting me for the seminar and hope to attend more of those. UNESCO Bangkok ICT in Education has inaugurated its official TEI network, that is the UNESCO Resource Distribution and Training Centres (RDTCs) who will serve as national/local focal points to promote the pedagogical integration of ICTs. The year’s Regional Seminar was co-organized with Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in Penang, Malaysia on 9-11 October 2013. The RDTCs expected to become full-fledged partners of UNESCO in cascading UNESCO-designed capacity building programmes locally, utilizing the innovative pedagogical approaches and various CD resources developed by UNESCO. RDTC focal points had the opportunity share relevant cases on ICT integration in education at institutional and national levels during the Seminar. Country cum institutional reports were requested from RDC focal points to share a general overview of ICT in Education, Teacher Training practices to promote ICT integration and the challenges and lessons learnt. RDTC representatives participated in the planning session of the RDTC activities to further identify areas for support and prioritize the needs for the annual gathering. As for the inaugural year, the RDTC focal points will be trained on developing pedagogies for enhancing student 21st century skills incorporating the 21st Century Learning Design (21 CLD), a global professional development programme developed by Microsoft Partners in Learning.