The UNESCO Courier - Volume 2023, Issue 4, 2023

At a time when the field of education is in worldwide ferment, a single instructional phenomenon has captured the attention not only of professionals but of laymen.” Does the innovation in question refer to artificial intelligence (AI), or to the use of augmented reality in the classroom? Neither one. This quote is from an article in The UNESCO Courier about “teaching machines”, a set of programmes developed in the USA to guide students in their learning. It dates back to… March 1965.

The use of artificial intelligence in education needs to be subject to supervision and independent evaluations. Only then, argues Ben Williamson, will schools be able to maintain their mission of developing critical thinking and shaping the citizens of tomorrow.

The health crisis linked to the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the use of new educational technologies on the continent. While they open up new possibilities, these innovative solutions come up against inequalities in digital access.

Since March 2023, Khan Academy, a non-profit organization offering free online education, has been piloting a teaching assistant powered by artificial intelligence (AI) called Khanmigo. Khan Academy’s founder Sal Khan is convinced that, when properly supervised, this tool can help students consolidate their learning and improve their self-esteem.

The use of new technologies can improve learning opportunities in rural schools and help expand children’s horizons.

Capable not only of providing content but also of interacting with students, generative artificial intelligence (AI) can be an excellent aid to teachers, as long as its development is controlled and supervised, explains Stuart J. Russell, professor of computer science at the University of Berkeley (United States) and co-author with Peter Norvig of the reference book Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach.

For over twenty years, Estonia has been betting on technology, particularly in the education sector. A gamble that is paying off.

Since 2022, schools in the province of Mendoza have been using artificial intelligence to detect the pupils most likely to drop out early.

It’s a story that began long ago, in another lifetime. Snow – sneg in Slovenian, the mother tongue of Klavdij Sluban – has marked the work of this traveling photographer for 25 years. Like a dotted line going back to his childhood, it connects him to Slovenia, his home country, which he left at eight years old.

Sounds are everywhere. Animals, especially birds, create tailored calls to find mates, to alert others of predators, and to establish territories. Insects, such as crickets, cicadas and grasshoppers, are present in nearly all ecosystems, and typically keep the “rhythm” of a place through their pulsating sound production. Amphibians also contribute to the rhythm of nature; in some places, they do so in such large numbers that it becomes deafening.

A poet, playwright, novelist, painter and actor, Frankétienne is a major figure in Haitian literature. The author of a prolific body of work, he writes in both Haitian Creole and French. He is one of the founders of Spiralism, a literary and aesthetic movement that seeks to express the fecundity of chaos through writing that combines verbal invention and transgression of the classical rules of narrative. Since 2010, he has been a UNESCO Artist for Peace.

Hate speech is nothing new, but the phenomenon is spreading at an unprecedented rate and scale in the age of social media. Both online and offline, it targets a person or a group on the basis of who they are. Hate speech not only causes harm at the personal level; it also undermines social cohesion. In response to this alarming trend, the United Nations proclaimed, in 2022, 18 June as the International Day for Countering Hate Speech. UNESCO, actively engaged in the fight against online hate speech through education, emphasizes the urgent need for common principles worldwide to improve the reliability of information while protecting human rights.