COL-CEMCA Emphasises AI Literacy as Key to Future-Ready Education at APMED 6

A Special Session on AI and Learning for a Sustainable Future at the 6th Asia-Pacific Meeting on Education 2030 (APMED 6) featured Dr B. Shadrach, Director of COL-CEMCA, who discussed key initiatives on AI in education. He highlighted COL-CEMCA’s efforts, such as the AI literacy programme for teachers and students based on MIT-RAISE’s Day of AI curriculum in partnership with MIT-RAISE. The programme aims to train 3,000 teachers during the pilot phase with the ambition to scale it up to 300,000 teachers.

Dr Shadrach also mentioned AI literacy for informal sector workers, an initiative in collaboration with Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, which aims to acquaint millions of farmers, factory workers, and others with AI. Additionally, the "Teachers in the Loop AI" programme is being developed to create generative AI-based Open Educational Resources (OERs) for both pre-service and in-service teachers, aligning content with national high school curricula.

The special session showcased the critical need for transforming education to meet the challenges of the future, with a strong focus on innovative solutions such as AI literacy.

APMED 6 took place from 10 to 13 September 2024 in Bangkok, Thailand. Organised by the UNESCO Regional Office in collaboration with UNICEF, under the Asia-Pacific Learning and Education 2030+ Networking Group, APMED 6 was supported by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

With the theme "Accelerating Actions: Transforming the What and How of Learning for a Sustainable Future," the event provided an opportunity to countries from the region, youth representatives, and experts to address the global learning crisis. The meeting focused on transforming both 'what' is learned and 'how' learning takes place, while also promoting initiatives to meet the Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) by 2030.