The Galician Minister of Education, Science, Universities, and Vocational Training, Román Rodríguez, took part today in the launch of Digital Agora, a new platform designed to help teachers develop innovative methodologies for the classroom. This initiative arises from the need to have a public space where ideas, strategies, and activities can be shared and used in class, especially in relation to STEM and technological skills, which currently face constant updates and new challenges.
Digital Agora, a project coordinated by the Centre for Educational and Digital Innovation (CIEDix), operates as an open forum for the educational community, where teachers can find digital resources to use in the classroom and create new ones. The materials are based on experiential, meaningful, flexible, short-term, and very specific learning to facilitate educational transformation with just one click.
Digital Agora stands out for its reliability, as it features materials created by teachers and experts, its practicality, given that the resources have been tested in real classroom contexts, and its availability in both Galician and Spanish. All the resources share common features, with tags to classify, organise, and search through all the publications available.
The publications in Digital Agora are structured into six sections or laboratories: LAB-Microsequences, LAB-Spaces, LAB-Strategies, LAB-Ideas, LAB-Expert, and LAB-AI. The LAB-Microsequences section offers reproducible microlearning experiences for the classroom, such as learning how a car’s parking sensor works using robotics materials; while LAB-Spaces provides advice on creating new learning environments based on the experiences of other schools, such as using sensory classrooms. Meanwhile, LAB-Strategies focuses on proposing innovative learning methodologies (such as lightning talks), and LAB-Ideas serves as an open door to other resources or calls of interest. In this last section, for example, one can find an introduction to the online educational resources of CERN. LAB-Expert centres on interviews in short video format with experts in the digital and STEM fields, as well as in education, discussing emerging trends.
The current catalogue includes a conversation with educator Nélida Zaitegi, who explores positive coexistence—an area in which she is a recognised expert—alongside an interview with the AI researcher and specialist Francisco Bellas from the Centre for ICT Research at the Universidade da Coruña, who delves into the impact of AI on teaching, among other interviews.
The last section of the platform, LAB-AI, is dedicated to teachers who wish to get started in artificial intelligence, one of the major educational challenges in the medium term. It includes brief contributions on implementing AI in education for those interested in this field, covering topics such as decision trees and the ChatGPT application.