Stories

Marta Molina is a ProFuturo teacher at the Alejandro Alvear Basic Education School, in the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador. She began working with the ProFuturo solution in her classrooms two years before the pandemic. Today, she is still committed to integrating technology and teaching into her students’ learning.

Marta, like the other teachers in the programme, works to improve the development opportunities of her students through educational, social and cultural projects. In addition, the digital approach is key to generating educational progress in the country. Reducing the educational gap by providing quality education to children through teacher training and classroom experience is the main goal of ProFuturo in Ecuador.

In Ecuador, schools continue to play a major role in education and everything revolves around educational centres. Blended modalities are not very widespread in the country. The technological infrastructure of public schools does not promote leveraging the potential of ICTs either, of the more than 12,000 public educational units in the country, only 4,747 have Internet access.

With the arrival of the pandemic and digital education as a response to face-to-face school closures, the differences in access to technology became even more visible. Out of 3 million students accessing public education in Ecuador, only 2 million had connectivity. In addition, one million had no access to computers or the Internet, resulting in school dropouts and educational setbacks for girls and boys.

With the help of Telefónica Ecuador Foundation, our digital education programme has already benefited 1,048,500 children, 45,500 teachers and 917 schools across the country since its arrival in 2018. Specifically, in the Galápagos Islands, ProFuturo is present in 10 educational centres.

The Galápagos Islands, where Marta Molina works, have a problem that hinders proper access to digital education: poor connectivity and coverage. The arrival of ProFuturo in the island region has changed the way of teaching and has extended far beyond the classrooms.

“In the province, we have problems with Internet. But with the ProFuturo digital solution, we have an Intranet that allows us to work not only inside the school, but also to go out into the open. This allows us to go directly to work in the field with the students,” says Marta.

When the ProFuturo tablets landed in Marta’s classroom, it was clear to her that both teachers and students would benefit. “When the digital suitcase arrived, I also had the opportunity to receive it with my students. They were very excited because they hadn’t had a tablet”.

For the students, it meant a new, more dynamic and engaging way of learning. However, Marta points out that, for teachers, “they have helped us to learn more about digital tools, technology and pedagogies that we can implement”.

On the other hand, for some teachers, the application of ICTs in the classroom remains a challenge. With the goal of continuing to learn, Marta does not hesitate to get involved in this new way of teaching:  “I have followed many webinars and many trainings where they teach you to have new strategies, new ways of learning and all these things that are useful for us as teachers for the management of our students”

Marta is in no doubt: teachers can also learn from their students. As they began to work with the tablets, she realised that children are very good at handling new technologies and coming up with new ideas. “Our students are also already in the digital age where they can help us. It would be good if ProFuturo could also include the students as input for future publications,” she confirms