IPN will strengthen teacher training to fortify distance education

• The IPN´s General Director, Arturo Reyes Sandoval, participated in the panel "Thinking about Higher Education in a Prolonged Era of COVID-19" • The Secretary of Public Education, Delfina Gomez Alvarez, has stressed that in the pandemic distance education made it possible to offer fundamental learning to school communities • The new strategy in the teaching process must integrate the use of educational technology in a preponderant way: Reyes Sandoval

The National Polytechnic Institute will strengthen the training of its academics in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (TIC, for its acronym in spanish), in addition to platforms and new computer applications that contribute to strengthening distance education, said the IPN´s General Director, Arturo Reyes Sandoval, when participating in the panel "Thinking about Higher Education in a Prolonged Era of COVID-19", organized by The Americas Conference of Universities, belonging to The New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

The Secretary of Public Education, Delfina Gomez Alvarez, has recognized that during the preventive confinement derived from the COVID-19 pandemic, distance education, with the support of technologies and telecommunications, made it possible to offer fundamental learning to the country's school communities.

Offering an overview of the challenges faced by the IPN in the pandemic, Reyes Sandoval emphasized that the health emergency represented a greater challenge due to the need to take care of the health of the community and, at the same time, provide necessary elements to give continuity to the academic activity.

He highlighted the effort that the institution made to provide 2,000 laptops to an equal number of students and 1,000 more for teachers. "This, together with the school scholarships, are a good support for our students."

He explained the Polytechnic is a leading institution in technology and has experts in infrastructure and computational platforms to continue with distance courses. “However, it is necessary to strengthen the infrastructure; having all of our students online requires robust connectivity, because not all of our students have the same conditions," he added.

With the learning that the pandemic left us, he said, we must reassess the route and form a new strategy, which must predominantly integrate the use of educational technology. “For that it is necessary to reflect on what is required at this time, such as investing in areas that allow us to adapt to this new reality and invest in infrastructure and courses, so that our teachers know well the tools, applications and platforms with which they will work with their students virtually”.

Reyes Sandoval recognized that in Mexico as in the United States and in the rest of the world the challenges in facing this pandemic are similar and an opportunity that arose from this situation was the virtual approach between educational institutions, to analyze the current situation and project future scenarios.

Finally, the head of the IPN thanked The New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology for the approach it has maintained with the Polytechnic to find synergies and opportunity areas that allow joint collaborations for the benefit of both institutions.