• This was one of the main conclusions highlighted by María del Ángel Muñoz, Director General of Planning and Educational Management, at the I Conference: Challenges of Public Administrations in Educational Innovation, held at the Thyssen Museum in Madrid and organized by the edtech ODILO. 
• Public-private collaboration, parental education, and data governance and security were other key challenges identified for the education sector.
• The meeting was attended by members of the Education and Innovation councils of Aragon, Balearic Islands, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Canary Islands, Catalonia, Madrid, Extremadura, Galicia, Murcia, Navarra, and the autonomous city of Melilla, as well as representatives from INTEF.

Madrid, May 24, 2024 – “The role of the teacher has changed significantly. It is essential to support and empower them to take on the challenge of educating our students in an increasingly digital society. We have wonderful professionals who are becoming scarce in Europe, and we must inspire them to improve student education,” said María del Ángel Muñoz, Director General of Planning and Educational Management at the Ministry of Education, Vocational Training, and Sports.

This was one of the main conclusions of the I Conference: Challenges of Public Administrations in Educational Innovation, held at the Thyssen Museum in Madrid. The event, organized by ODILO, the Spanish edtech that enables all types of organizations and institutions to create their own Unlimited Learning Ecosystem, featured the participation of prominent representatives from the Education and Innovation councils of Aragon, Balearic Islands, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Canary Islands, Catalonia, Madrid, Extremadura, Galicia, Murcia, Navarra, and the autonomous city of Melilla, and representatives of the National Institute of Educational Technologies and Teacher Training (INTEF).

To achieve this, the Director General emphasized the need for public-private collaboration to advance the training of Spanish students towards the education of the future. “We must not lose sight of the objective of the education system: to equip students to become good professionals and citizens in a society as technified as the one they will live in,” she continued.

“This conference represents an important step on the path to educational innovation and continues to inspire our work and motivation to keep working on finding innovative solutions for education,” commented Ainhoa Marcos, VP Education Spain & Global K12 Sales Director of ODILO, who also shared that “the importance of collaboration between the public and private sectors, as together we can work on creative and effective solutions that benefit our students and strengthen unlimited learning.”

Extended training for parents

The various speakers at the conference emphasized the importance of creating a strategy that promotes innovation in education and involves all stakeholders, from students, teachers, parents, and of course, educational institutions. “The teacher is the fundamental and irreplaceable piece of the education system. We must motivate them and provide them with tools to adapt to changes, promoting their continuous training updates so they can accompany students in a digital future where they must know how to act and be responsible,” highlighted David Cervera, Director General of Bilingualism and Quality of Teaching, Department of Education, Science, and Universities of the Community of Madrid.

“A system will not have more quality than its teachers. For this reason, we must empower them to feel confident,” Luis Domingo González Núñez, Director General of Innovation and Teacher Training at the Board of Castilla y León, pointed out in that line. Specifically, regarding the work being done in the Castilla y León region, he stated that they rely “on permanent innovation to provide the teaching community with the best tools to prepare students so they can responsibly navigate today’s society. An innovation, away from fads and anchored in tradition, where basic knowledge is complemented by internationalization and digitization.”

In this regard, many communities have their own ecosystem of unlimited learning, an ally in promoting educational habits by adapting to the needs of institutions, teachers, and students. This is the case of LeemosCLM, an ecosystem driven by the Department of Education of Castilla-La Mancha together with ODILO.

“LeemosCLM is a tool that allows teachers to guide their students’ reading as a means to improve reading competence. The experience of these years working with the tool, with a progressive increase in users, leads us to continue to support it with the certainty that it will continue to contribute positively to the goal of training more and better readers,” explained Lucio César Calleja Bachiller, Director General of Educational Innovation and Centers, Department of Education, Culture, and Sports of Castilla-La Mancha.

Data management as a springboard to the success of the ‘new education’

The conference also highlighted the importance of promoting policies and plans for the proper use and governance of data to harness all the information generated by the education system. One of the biggest data generators, from the moment students take notes in class, is being addressed by ODILO with data panels that offer a global view for decision-making.

In this vein, Ainhoa Marcos highlighted the commitment that all institutions must have to implement a solution that guarantees the correct and safe use of the data they encounter. “All educational actors face a common challenge and seek the same results. Over the years, many institutions in the country have attempted to create their own platform without implementing it correctly. The key lies in the support of a network of partners and suppliers that enable us to tackle future challenges regarding bias. From our role, we support the development of learning and knowledge with reliable sources that respect copyright with more than 4 million resources.”

Continuing the line of the importance of data, Ignacio Azorín, Director General of Digital Strategy, Department of Digitalization of the Community of Madrid, explained that “the use and analysis of data are a gold mine to exploit. It is a differential point to identify possible cases of school dropout which, also thanks to data, can be prevented.

Víctor Ramos, Head of Education and Research at AWS, focused on the need for the business fabric to find talent trained in digital skills. An aspect that, according to the spokesperson, only 18% of companies address without difficulty. “We collaborate with ODILO so that they make use of our technology in the development of their solutions. We believe that it is the edtech companies that, in the intermediate chain of the educational system, can provide companies with the trained digital talent they demand. Additionally, they foster other crucial skills today such as critical thinking or creativity,” he pointed out.

ABOUT ODILO

ODILO is a digital education company that allows any organization to create its own Learning Ecosystem, offering its users unlimited access to the world’s largest multi-format educational content catalog, and the possibility of creating all kinds of learning experiences without restrictions. More than 9,100 organizations from over 54 countries have already created Unlimited Learning Ecosystems that provide access to learning for an aggregated user base of +170 million users.

ODILO, the world’s largest educational ecosystem, has content agreements with +7300 providers of educational digital content in all formats (courses, interactive applications, videos, podcasts, press, magazines, audiobooks, books, etc.).

ODILO is a multivertical company, driving learning in Private Companies, Public and Private Schools, Public and Private Universities, Certified Vocational Training, Public Administration, and Government.