UNESCO Helps Develop Students’ Coding Skills in the West Bank and Gaza – UNESCO News Item

UNESCO and the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MoEHE), with the generous funding of the Weidong Cloud Education Group(link is external) from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), trained a number of Information Technology (IT)  teachers and 790 students in both the West Bank and Gaza from grades 8-12 with programming skills, to develop mobile applications and integrate these skills in their e-learning process.

The training was part of the activity entitled ‘Empowering youth with innovative digital and entrepreneurial skills for jobs in a digital economy’, under the framework of the UNESCO-WeiDong Group Funds-in-Trust project on leveraging ICT to achieve Education 2030.

The Minister of Education and Higher Education, H.E. Dr. Sabri Saidam, highlighted the value of education through excellence and innovation in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). He also shared Palestine’s local, regional and international accomplishments in the use of ICT and further emphasized the role of ICT in the achievement of greater quality in education and critical learning.

Dr. Lodovico Folin Calabi, UNESCO Representative to Palestine, emphasized that UNESCO believes that ICT can complement, enrich and transform education for the better. Technology can facilitate universal access to education, bridge learning divides, support the development of teachers, enhance the quality and relevance of learning, strengthen inclusion and improve educational administration and governance. He further concluded that digital skills are critical for jobs and social inclusion in a connected world and to ensure a growing and sustainable economy in Palestine.

At the closing ceremony of the activity, held in Ramallah on 12 December under the auspices of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education and UNESCO, student representatives from Jerusalem, Jenin, Nablus, Kabatia, Hebron, Tulkarem, Jericho, Tubas, Yata, Salfeet, Ramallah, Bethlahem, and  Qalqilya had the opportunity to show the mobile applications they developed in class as part of the

The UNESCO-WeiDong Group Funds-in-Trust project on leveraging ICT to achieve Education 2030 is a global project launched in 2015 to help Member States harness the potentials of ICT for the provision of inclusive, equitable and quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030.

• For more information on the project, contact the responsible officer, Mr Fengchun Miao, at f.miao@unesco.org(link sends e-mail).