More than 20,000 students between 10 and 16 years old visit The Youth Mobile Festival (YoMo), the section of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) aimed at youth. YoMo dedicates an area to educational resources and provides a wide range of the latest ones available at a national and international level to support teaching in the classroom.
YoMo Barcelona open on 27 february as part of GSMA Mobile World Congress and ProFuturo, the major digital iniciative aimed at closing the education gap, backed by Fundacion Telefónica and Fundación Bancaria ‘la Caixa’, was keen not miss it. Through technological equipment, proprietary software and virtual reality glasses, ProFuturo provide every visitor with the opportunity to experience their fieldwork in Asia, Latin América and África.
On the occasion of the GSMA Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest mobile technology gathering held annually in Barcelona, YoMo welcomed over 20,000 Spanish students, as well as teachers and administrators from education centres. The objective of the show is to inspire thousands of young people and to help give them a better understanding of careers in the STEAM sectors in an ever more mobile world.
ProFuturo is the major education initiative sponsored by Fundación Telefonica and Fundación Bancaria “la Caixa”, in Third World countries. Its mission is to promote access to high quality universal education to contribute towards boys and girls having equal opportunities. It is focused on acquiring skills through the use of technology and empowering teachers to employ innovative teaching methods.
The technical solution it offers is the Digital Classroom, a project comprising three main components: the technical features of devices and connectivity; an education platform with universal interactive content for children and young people; and training, back-up and support for educators and coordinators. Participation at YoMo provided an opportunity for participants to go through the complete ProFuturo experience, made up of three phases or steps:
1. Get to know the Digital Classroom and its technological features.
2. Experience a Digital Classroom: taking part in a simulation of a lesson using tablets to access content, immersed in the role of the student.
3. Travel to a digital classroom in Africa: to be able to see our fieldwork in action and attend an actual Digital Classroom in Africa by means of a virtual reality experience using 360º glasses.
The context out of which ProFuturo grew was one in which teachers had insufficient specific training. This resulted in children not acquiring the basic skills and then dropping out of education through lack of motivation. That is why ProFuturo concentrates on introducing the tools and methodologies into schools that will improve the quality of the teaching processes and at the same time motivate children in order to reduce the drop-out rate, improve academic results and acquire skills and values.
It is an innovative digital project, designed and adapted to the environments it is aimed at. Its focus is on basic education in three huge geographical regions: Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia. It is an educational project that seeks to strengthen and promote psychosocial skills with which to face life, grow and develop on a personal and professional level and thereby make a positive contribution to society.
