News & Views

Over 50,000 students, teachers and education experts from ten countries attended the second annual School of the Future, a global digital learning conference for Cognita teams on 17-20 October 2022.

The four-day virtual event featured presentations and roundtables from a combination of Cognita global colleagues and over 25 international experts, including representatives from some brilliant technology partners such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Harvard Project Zero, Ixperience, Kaligo, Lyfta, Lab4U, Fortinet, Code Monkey, Crack The Code, Mustakis, ACAPOMIL, Ticmas and Noodle Factory.

The conference’s main objective was to share, celebrate and demonstrate the benefits of digital learning, and how to use technology actively but also in a responsible way, engaging and preparing the future generations to become digitally enabled learners and to thrive in a rapidly evolving world.

Carrie James and Emily Weinstein, both Harvard Graduate School of Education Project Zero, presented their work on #BehindTheirScreens. This was a fascinating opportunity to engage in an evidence-based conversation around “teens and screens”, grounded in their research on what adults are missing about the pull of the screen, friendship, activism, and more.

The School of The Future event, organised by Cognita’s team in Chile, focused on four key themes; digital citizenship, technology in the classroom, computational thinking and programming, and technology for inclusion and immersive learning. The nature of the conference demonstrates a clear example of sharing best practices and expertise across our global community, whilst highlighting Cognita’s recognition of the relevance and impact of digital learning on the future of education.

A Year 11 Chilean student from Manquecura Valle Lo Campino School participated in a roundtable exercise, presenting a project about a robotic hand whilst raising awareness of how prosthetics work. Utilising the Arduino platform to work and analyse finger-by-finger, she demonstrated the complexity of basic movements for the technology. Physics teacher, Patricio Farfán assisted with the project and the 3D printing of the hand. The student said, “I really enjoyed sharing with other schools from Chile and Spain. It was an exceptional opportunity for students to generate new ideas that both personally and academically help us to advance our own interests”.

Victor Barahona, General Manager of Cognita Chile, said, “We are very pleased with the execution of School of The Future 2022. There were four days of brilliant presentations, roundtables, and diverse opportunities for participation among teachers and students from the global family of Cognita schools. This conference allowed us to analyse and share experiences, best practices in digital learning, and the latest trends in Ed Tech, thus strengthening our position as an educational reference in Chile. I sincerely appreciate the commitment and dedication of our local teams and the remarkable participation of representatives from all regions, who made the second edition of The School of the Future conference such a success.”

A big thank you to our Cognita Chile team for organising another very successful event!