Minister of National Education Mahmut Özer made statements about new digital steps taken by his Ministry in order to increase the accessibility of students, teachers and all people to quality education and training.
"There has been an increase in the importance of digitalization during this period when technology rapidly becomes involved in daily life and expectations of people from education gradually changes. In our era, digitalization became an important part of many daily life activities. In this light, the needs of the society and people matured accordingly. Rapid changes in technology shapes the new needs of people," said Minister Özer.
Teacher and student based process in digital transformation
Minister Özer said, "Increasing variety of knowledge and rapid changes increases people's need for learning. Within this framework, opportunities provided by digitalization uare making learning habits of people more adaptable, easy, comfortable and sustainable. Transformation of digitalization is also increasing the welfare level and it is also easily adaptable to the education process."
Reminding that the Ministry will decorate 90 percent of all classrooms with interactive boards until the end of this year, Özer noted that the Ministry carries out a teacher and student based digital transformation process by considering creativity and innovation.
"As a part of transformation and change experienced in the information and communication technologies in the 21st century, our Ministry initiated a digitalization campaign in education in the last year in order to adapt our education to the digital technology and increase digital literacy skills of our students and teachers," stated Özer.
ÖBA is actively used for the professional development process of teachers
One of the important steps taken as a part of the digitalization campaign was the Teacher Information Network (ÖBA) which was founded in January 2022. Özer noted that 8 million 13 thousand and 864 teachers have completed training programs organized in ÖBA and at least 1 million 16 thousand and 638 teachers have completed at least one training program offered in this network.
Digital platforms used for remedial support mechanisms
Özer reminded that the Ministry designed projects and campaigns in order to encourage students, teachers and parents to use digital and online platforms during transition from face-to-face education to distance education adding that: "We had distributed 160 million free supplementary sources in addition to free text books and we also published all these sources in the digital platforms. We have founded "Student-Teacher Support System (ÖDS)" which is an individualized mechanism designed in order to find remedy to learning loss in the aftermath of the pandemic. Our students and teachers could find the support they need in this digital platform. We also started a mathematics, foreign language and Turkish campaign after the pandemic and we also founded a digital platform about mathematics as a part of this campaign. Foreign language and Turkish platforms will be available soon."
Technological steps in vocational education and public education centers
Özer stated that the Ministry founded Augmented Reality Platform in Vocational Education that aims at eliminating the place and time dependency during the education process by digitalizing lesson materials in vocational and technical education and providing students living in disadvantaged regions the opportunity to experience 3D modeling. Özer noted that this platform aims at giving students the opportunity to develop design skills with virtual experiments in the digital environment.
Özer went on to say that: "Another important tendency in our ear is to provide education to people of all ages. Equal accessibility to education for all people is an important perspective. We believe in providing teaching activities to all people from cradle to grave. We also want to include parents in the education system. Due to this reason, we will collect public education training programs and courses under the roof of Public Education Centers Information Network (HEMBA). Parents and adults will have the opportunity to attend these digital training programs and we will make an important contribution to lifelong learning activities on an international level by opening these programs to our people living abroad. All these projects and campaigns aim at increasing the digital technology skills and academic success of all stakeholders of education."