This year we once again attended the EURead General Annual Meeting, the grouping of different European organizations and companies that share the objective of promoting and encouraging reading through a wide variety of programs and events, appropriate to the culture and social situation of each country.
At the assembly, which was held on the afternoon of September 22, representatives from different countries exchanged knowledge, experiences and ideas on literature and literacy habits among young people from all over the world.
In this vein Dr. Andreas Schleicher, Directorate of Education & Skills at the OECD, emphasized the importance of literature as a method of training and promoting the integration of young people in society, and highlighted the relevance of motivation and teacher empathy when it comes to helping students fall in love with reading.
In addition, Schleicher highlighted that “literature has become a form of interactive knowledge”; if students have tools at their disposal, they will seek more information and discoveries through reading, in order to be able to answer all the questions that arise.
“Literature in the 21st century is practical.
Young people enjoying reading and interacting with books is what will change the world”
– Dr. Andreas Schleicher,OECD Director
It is thanks to this motivation, together with learning programs and collaborative models, that young people are led to reflect, generate empathy and develop critical thinking.
Lessons from COVID-19
During the Annual Meeting, different European organizations shared the programs developed during the year, especially to deal with the confinements that many countries have had to implement due to COVID-19.
Elisa Yuste, School Product Owner at ODILO and representative of the company at the EURead Assembly, shared how the ODILO team decided to open its platform at no cost to all institutions that needed to have a personalized unlimited learning ecosystem to face the challenge of continuing education through online channels during confinement.
Yuste highlighted the support service that ODILO has been offering to hundreds of educational institutions around the world to provide access to high quality educational content and learning solutions to as many users as has been operationally possible, with the valuable collaboration of our content providers and partner institutions.
With this initiative, ODILO has managed to reinforce and provide educational consulting teams, dynamization services and Collaborative Learning Clubs for families and teachers in order to ensure that they always have a tool at hand to continue training from home during this pandemic.
A tremendously interesting assembly that, once again, raises awareness about the importance of creating a solid structural framework for the promotion of reading and learning at a national and European level.