Dr. Paul Resta Serves as President Of International Jury for New UNESCO Prize - January 9, 2007

Dr. Paul E. Resta, Director of the Learning Technology Center and Professor of Instructional Technology in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education, recently served as President of the international jury to award the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize for the Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Education. The $50,000 prize, launched in 2005 with funding from the Kingdom of Bahrain, rewards non-governmental projects that use information and communication technologies to enhance learning and teaching.

A total of 35 projects were submitted by 26 countries. The laureates of the 2006 award, which had the theme “Innovative Learning Practices with Information and Communication Technologies,” were the Cyber Home Learning System for Primary and Secondary Students in the Republic of Korea and the eDegree Programme in Lapland in Finland. UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura and the King of Bahrain will present the awards to the laureates on January 12 in a ceremony at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France.

Dr. Resta reports that the Cyber Home Learning System for Primary and Secondary Students, a project of the Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources and the Korea Education and Research Information Service (KERIS), works to bridge the digital divide and is an innovative national model for collaborative educational planning by governmental agencies, legislative bodies, educational institutions, parents, and communities. He believes that Korea’s approach to facilitating students’ access to knowledge through ICT both at home and at school can serve as an example to other countries.

The other laureate, the eDegree Programme in Lapland, focuses on the needs of unemployed adults in remote, depopulated areas. Developed by Kemi-Tornio Polytechnic, a pioneer in distance education in Finland, the project initially targeted Lapland but rapidly spread throughout the country. Dr. Resta feels that the number of people who have completed their studies and found employment is impressive evidence of the program’s effectiveness.

An honorable mention was awarded to the Dedicated Civil Law-Teaching Website for Arab Law Students from the School of Law at Kuwait University. This Website is a model of Internet use to enhance the learning of law and it has encouraged several law schools in Arab countries to make high-quality learning resources available to their students via the Internet. Developed over 18 months with minimum funding, the project demonstrates that using ICT in education need not necessarily be a costly venture.

Dr. Resta has worked on several UNESCO projects focusing on technology use in education, which allow him to work to improve education on a global scale. He served as a Senior Consultant on distance education from 1998 to 2004. He is currently editor of the UNESCO document Teacher Development in an E-Learning Age: A Policy and Planning Guide, and was also editor of Information and Communication Technologies in Teacher Education: A Planning Guide published by UNESCO in 2002 and translated into five languages. His work in the College of Education focuses on web-based learning environments, computer-supported collaborative learning, infusion of technology into teacher education, and planning and policy issues surrounding the use of information and communication technologies in teacher education.

—Laurie Caldwell, LTC Communications Coordinator

Related Links:

• Dr. Resta's Faculty Directory Page
• The Learning Technology Center Website