Plenaries
Learning, Teaching, Investing in Resilience
Date Friday, Dec 3 Time – Room Potsdam I
Do you feel as if you are coming up for air after 19 of the most challenging months in education history? Universities, colleges, schools, teachers and students have been forced to adapt rapidly to profound change. We have all had a crash course in resilience. What has our experience taught us about human behaviour and technologies for learning? We understand the importance of resilience but can we build it into our planning for the future? Is it enough just to change our approach to the use of technology or do we need to change the nature of education itself?
Our experts will examine the changes we need to make to education and offer unique insights into new modes of flexible teaching, EdTech, digital equity and essential human skills. They will suggest that we should take a pause from pouring resources into “systems”, to ensure that the small thing we might do differently tomorrow will make a positive difference in our place of work, and a fundamental difference to the successes of our students.
Speakers
Borhene Chakroun
Director for Policies and Lifelong Learning Systems, UNESCO
Borhene Chakroun is an engineer and has a PhD in Education Sciences from Bourgogne University in France. His academic work focuses on the certification and validation of prior learning.
Borhene worked, during the 1990s, as trainer, chief trainer, VET project manager. He has also worked as short-term consultant for the EU, World Bank and other international organisations before coming to the European Training Foundation (ETF) in 2001. At the ETF, Borhene worked as Senior Human Capital Development specialist and Team leader of the EU funded regional project Education and training for Employment (MEDA-ETE).
He has also coordinated the ETF’s community of practice on National Qualifications Frameworks and Recognition of Qualifications. He is now Head of the TVET section at UNESCO and is leading the implementation of the UNESCO TVET strategy adopted in 2009
Perttu Pölönen
Futurist, Inventor and Author, ., Finland
Perttu Pölönen has been given many titles, such as inventor, author, composer, keynote speaker, futurist and visionaire.
In Finnish media Perttu has been called a gentle highbrow and a fearless inventor. Perttu himself still prefers not to use titles at all –it’s difficult to put him into any known box.
Perttu is a classically trained composer by education, but became an entrepreneur at a young age. Perttu has studied at Singularity University, a think tank located at the NASA Ames Research Center in California. While in California, he co-founded a non-profit, 360ed, that develops AR apps for the education sector in developing countries–the company is run and operated in Myanmar.
Perttu’s own invention, MusiClock, is an example of how a personal challenge can be turned into an internationally awarded and patented invention. It won the at biggest science fair in Europe, the European Union's Competition for Young Scientists. The MusiClock mobile app became #1 music app in over 10 countries. In 2014 Perttu was given the “Most Creative Finn” Award at Slush and in 2018 MIT Tech Review honored him among 35 Innovators Under 35 in Europe.
Perttu has written two books: Future Skills (2020) and Future Identities (2021). Perttu is known as an inspiring thinker who believes that human skills and values will be crucially important in the future, to balance technological advancements.