EdTech Summit Charts Future of Belizean Classrooms  

Teachers, Principals and school leaders from across Belize gathered today at the Belize City Civic Center for day two of the Ministry of Education’s National Edtech Summit. The two-day event was held under the theme “Teaching Hacks” with today’s conference focusing on how school administrators can utilize emerging technologies to better collaborate with teachers, staff and students. The event served as a launching point for a new era of partnership between school management, teachers and technology in the interest of strengthening organizational cohesion. This morning, News Five’s Devin Sabal stopped by to get a firsthand look at the future of education.

 

Devin Sabal, Reporting

Following a massive turn out of teachers on day one, the Belize City Civic Center was once again brimming with energy as waves of administrators turned up to attend the second day of the National Edtech Summit. The discussions centered around integration between technology and education, with the aim to share knowledge and information on how to use technology to improve both teaching and learning for teachers and students across Belize.

 

Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education

“This is the second national Edtech summit. It’s really all about the Ministry of Education engaging with our teachers and our school leaders and education stakeholders. You know to really have a comprehensive, substantive discussion about the intersection of education and technology.”

 

The theme of this year’s summit was “Teaching Hacks”. Organizers noted that while hacking may generally have a negative connotation attached to it, that’s not the case here. At the summit, hacking is an approach to education that’s centered around effectiveness through the focus areas of hacking  time, hacking our imagination, hacking space and hacking the curriculum.

 

Jeanne Link, Assistant Dean, Sacred Heart Junior College

“As an administrator, I’m very much aware of our students and our faculty’s impact from AI. With our faculty it has been wonderful, especially in doing calculations for like key assessment analysis, in order to review a lot of information very quickly. So I’ve seen it enhancing the time effectiveness of our teacher’s work. They can easily have the AI edit their work so that saves a lot of time.”

 

In recent years, administrators and management at all levels of academia have become increasingly aware of the growing need for innovation not just in their classrooms but also in their planning and organizing. The Edtech summit allows educators a space to convene and explore ways to combat the challenges they may face not only with the implementation of these new technologies but with the decision-making processes associated with these additions.

 

Ray Lawrence, Principal, Stann Creek Ecumenical College

“Oh definitely, remember we have to build human capacity. So we’re asking our current educators to deliver the national curriculum, which is a competency based curriculum now, but we have not trained them. And so a lot of training will be necessary because if the teachers themselves don’t know how to leverage technology then how can they teach the students how to leverage technology? So that’s one of the greatest challenges between ministry, management and teachers. The teachers have the desire to do it, but they require the capacity building and so the training is important.”

 

By applying technology in new and creative ways, educators, leadership and partners are looking forward to a vastly wider reaching and competent curriculum and teaching experience. When management can better serve their teachers, the effects are felt everywhere, from classrooms to homes and the workforce.

 

Reporting for News Five, I am Devin Sabal.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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