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The event provided an opportunity to analyze the lessons learned from the transformation of Computadores para Educar into Tecnologías para Aprender and to discuss priorities for consolidating an inclusive, relevant, and sustainable digital education system in Colombia.
During the event, a Management Report and seven technical briefs were presented, showcasing practices from educational institutions across the country and highlighting the voices and experiences of educational communities and government stakeholders. These documents reflect policies, programs, and public initiatives that have transformed the way digital citizenship is taught and learned.
The report systematizes the progress, tensions, challenges, and opportunities associated with the new Tecnologías para Aprender approach and offers recommendations to strengthen the continuity of Colombia’s digital education policy.
The conference also created opportunities for discussion and focused exchange around the themes explored in the technical briefs, while fostering participation in a national and international dialogue on priorities for strengthening public digital education policies.
From Device Distribution to Learning Mobilization
Tecnologías para Aprender seeks to move beyond an approach centered primarily on the mass distribution of computers and toward a strategy in which technologies are selected and used according to pedagogical goals, school projects, and the needs of each educational community.
This shift recognizes that devices and connectivity remain essential, but do not, by themselves, guarantee better learning outcomes. Transformation requires teacher training and support, curriculum integration, institutional leadership, evaluation, environmental sustainability, stable financing, and governance structures that protect the agency of students and educators. The strategy aims to foster critical digital citizenship and place technology at the service of quality, equitable, and inclusive education linked to local development.
During the conference, this vision was illustrated through the experiences of students, teachers, and communities participating in the initiatives. Their contributions demonstrated that schools are not passive recipients of technological solutions; rather, they are spaces capable of adapting, reinterpreting, and using tools to address educational, environmental, cultural, and community challenges. The agenda also featured the presentation of two episodes of a documentary series that showcased stories and experiences developed across different regions.
Seven Technical Briefs: Learning from Implementation
One of the central moments of the conference was the presentation and discussion of seven technical briefs produced as part of the Knowledge Management Project. The studies addressed topics such as the integration of technology into school experiences; Centers of Interest within comprehensive education; School Technical Clubs and device repair; initial teacher training; the pedagogical adoption of artificial intelligence; public procurement of educational technology; and financing a digital education basket.
The studies combined literature and institutional reviews, data analysis, interviews, focus groups, workshops, observation of practices, case studies, and visits to various regions. Their findings were shared through three parallel micro-conferences on teacher training and assessment, comprehensive education, and procurement and financing. These sessions brought together researchers and stakeholders from educational communities, the public sector, academia, and civil society. They provided an opportunity to discuss not only the outcomes of the initiatives, but also the conditions needed to adapt, sustain, and scale them.
The studies converged on a common lesson: technology creates the greatest value when it responds to a pre-existing educational purpose. The most meaningful projects do not begin with a tool, but with a pedagogical question, a student interest, or a local challenge. The findings also showed that innovation cannot rely indefinitely on extraordinary effort or the goodwill of individual teachers; it requires leadership support, recognized time, sustained guidance, and alignment with curricula and institutional educational projects.
From Recommendations to Strategies
The first day included an international panel focused on the priorities that should guide future public administrations. The discussion emphasized that transformation requires less accumulation of tools and more institutional strategy; sustained investment in teachers’ capacities; budget continuity and policy support to ensure long-term sustainability; and technology integration designed to reduce educational gaps.
Artificial intelligence played a prominent role in the debate, particularly regarding the risk of delegating essential processes such as thinking, argumentation, writing, and problem-solving to these tools. In response, participants advocated for avoiding both prohibition and uncritical adoption, and instead advancing through experimentation, monitoring, and evaluation of AI as a learning support tool while preserving critical thinking, creativity, pedagogical judgment, and student responsibility.
The second day incorporated international experiences that can inform Colombia’s public policy agenda. One of the most significant messages was that digital innovation only generates public value when it strengthens learning, reduces gaps, responds to the real needs of educational communities, and contributes to the development of critical and reflective digital citizenship.
A Collective Effort for the Future
The conference concluded with working groups in which students, teachers, specialists, institutional representatives, and other members of the digital education ecosystem identified priorities, existing capacities, and opportunities for collaboration. The exercise aimed to strengthen the roadmap of recommendations for public policy, recognize the efforts already underway across different organizations, and advance greater coordination among national and local stakeholders.
The working groups agreed on three structural priorities: establishing participatory governance with permanent cross-sector coordination; building monitoring and evaluation systems capable of measuring the real impact of policies; and ensuring technological infrastructure that recognizes the differences between rural and urban contexts while strengthening the pedagogical use of digital tools.
For UNESCO, digital transformation must expand the right to education and contribute to the development of critical, participatory, and responsible digital citizenship. This requires keeping people at the center, protecting cultural diversity, strengthening the teaching profession, and building public capacities to make informed, ethical, and sovereign decisions about how, and whether, technologies should be integrated into teaching and learning processes.
READ MORE: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/colombia-advances-toward-people-centered-digital-education-support-unesco-and-undp?hub=701
