Step into the heart of Paris, where innovation meets tradition at the UNESCO headquarters, and the brightest minds in education and technology converge. Stankevicius Media, through Dr. Jasmin Cowin, brings you an exclusive, on-the-ground perspective from UNESCO Digital Learning Week 2025, a global gathering dedicated to shaping the future of digital education.
Live from UNESCO Headquarters in Paris
As I arrived at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris for the inaugural Digital Learning Week 2025, I felt a sense of both anticipation and responsibility. This event, newly rebranded after a decade as Mobile Learning Week, drew together a vibrant and diverse global community of educators, policy-makers, researchers, and innovators, all eager to address one of the defining questions of our era: How can we harness the power of digital technologies, especially artificial intelligence, to create more equitable, human-centered education for all?
I was honored to participate not just as a journalist but also as a presenter, sharing insights and research with colleagues from around the world. This unique dual role allowed me to both observe and contribute to the dynamic conversations that unfolded during the week.
A New Era for UNESCO’s Flagship Event
Digital Learning Week is more than a simple rebranding. It signals UNESCO’s commitment to steering the digital transformation of education in a human-centered direction. The event’s mission is to convene in-person gatherings that bring together policymakers, practitioners, educators, private sector partners, and development agencies to respond collaboratively to the evolving landscape of digital learning.
This year’s theme, “AI and the future of education: Disruptions, dilemmas and directions,” reflects the deep questions we face as educators and citizens. (Read the concept notes.) AI’s promise to personalize learning and increase access stands in tension with concerns about equity, ethics, and the preservation of human agency in teaching and learning. The conference set out to explore these tensions, offering a space not just for debate, but for collective imagination and practical action.
A Platform for Collective Reimagining
Digital Learning Week 2025 is a platform for bold and necessary conversations about the future of education. The event weaves together a rich tapestry of voices and viewpoints, inviting governments, private providers, researchers, students, and educators to challenge prevailing narratives, share evidence, and shape the path forward. The event’s structure reflected this sense of urgency and collective purpose.
The first day was devoted to taking stock of AI’s current impact, with a focus on evidence and experience. The second day addressed the choices and actions needed to guide responsible AI integration. The third day featured in-depth dialogues exploring alternative futures, while the fourth day offered practical workshops and co-creation sessions for participants to shape UNESCO’s knowledge products, standards, and capacity-building materials.
Setting the Stage: A Global Gathering in Paris
From the moment I entered UNESCO Headquarters, the atmosphere was charged with excitement and collegiality. Participants from every continent were present: ministers, policymakers, heads of UN agencies, private sector leaders, civil society organizations, youth groups, administrators, and researchers. The scale and diversity of the speakers, presenters, and audience were impressive and inspiring. The event was fully in-person, but UNESCO’s commitment to inclusivity on a global scale was evident in the livestreaming of plenary sessions and panel discussions, with interpretation available in multiple languages. In attendance was a global Who’s Who of officials, ministers, innovators, and thought-leaders.
UNESCO and UN Officials
Ms. Stefania Giannini
Assistant Director-General for Education, UNESCO
Ms. Lidia Brito
Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences and Assistant Director-General for Human and Social Sciences a.i., UNESCO
Mr. Tomas Lamanauskas
Deputy Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
Ms. Ruvendrini Menikdiwela
Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, UNHCR
Mr. Thomas Davin
Global Director, UNICEF Office of Innovations
Ministers and Deputy Ministers
H.E. Ms. Ogerta Manastirliu
Minister of Education and Sports, Albania
H.E. Mr. Artur Martirosyan
Deputy Minister, Science, Culture and Sports, The Republic of Armenia
H.E. Mr. Shri Mahipal Dhanda
Minister of Higher Education, Parliamentary Affairs and School Education, Haryana State, India
H.E. Ms. Fadhlina Sidek
Minister of Education, Malaysia
Hon. Dr. Mahend Gungapersad
Minister of Education and Human Resource, Mauritius
Hon. Dino Ballotti
Minister of Education, Innovation, Youth, Sports, Arts and Culture, Namibia
H.E. Mr. Thomáš Drucker
Minister Education, Research, Development and Youth, Slovakia
H. E. Ahmed Osman Dirie
State Minister for Communications & Technology, Federal Republic of Somalia; Member of the Federal Parliament
H. E. Bilal Macit
Deputy Minister of National Education, Türkiye
Hon. Dr. JC Muyingo
Minister of State for Higher Education, Uganda
H.E. Stephen Morgan
Minister for Education, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
H.E. Mr. Sardor Radjabov
Deputy Minister of Preschool and School Education, Uzbekistan
Plenary Speakers
Mr. Báyò Akómoláfé
Hubert Humphrey Distinguished Professor of American Studies, Macalester College; W.E.B. Du Bois Scholar, Schumacher Center for a New Economics; Inaugural Scholar in Residence, Aspen Global Leadership Network
Ms. Emily M. Bender
Professor, Department of Linguistics and Director, Computational Linguistics Laboratory, University of Washington, United States of America
Ms. Abeba Birhane
Founder, AI Accountability Lab (AIAL) and Research Fellow, School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Ms. Nina da Hora
Executive Director of Instituto da Hora, AI Researcher, Fellow of the Ford Foundation 2024, Brazil
Ms. Isabelle Hau
Executive Director, Stanford Accelerator for Learning, United States of America
Ms. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
C150 Research Chair, Professor at Simon Fraser University, Director at Digital Democracies Institute, Canada
Ms. Lisa Parks
Distinguished Professor, Film and Media Studies and Director, Global Media Technologies and Cultures Lab, UC Santa Barbara, United States of America
Ms. Bing Song
Senior Vice President, Berggruen Institute, and Director, Berggruen Institute China Center, China
Mr. Kalervo N. Gulson
Professor of Education Policy, Centre for AI, Trust & Governance, University of Sydney, Australia
Mr. Andreas Schleicher
Director for Education and Skills, OECD
Mr. Daniel Wagner
UNESCO Chair in Learning and Literacy and Professor of Education, University of Pennsylvania, United States of America
Mr. Geoffrey Alphonso
Chief Executive Officer, Alef Education, United Arab Emirates
Mr. Ty Kenworthy
Senior Director for Global Partnerships, Pearson
Mr. Simon Leung
Vice-Chairman, NetDragon, People’s Republic of China
Mr. Tianchi Li
Founder and CEO, CODEMAO, People’s Republic of China
Ms. Joleen Liang
Co-Founder, Squirrel Ai, People’s Republic of China
Mr. Tony Panetta
Principal Industry Lead Architect, Education, Microsoft
Ms. Inderpreet Sawhney
Group General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, Infosys, France
Moderators
Mr. Sobhi Tawil
Director, Division of the Future of Learning and Innovation, UNESCO
Mr. Borhene Chakroun
Director, Policies and Lifelong Learning Systems Division, UNESCO
Mr. Manos Antoninis
Director, Global Education Monitoring Report, UNESCO
Ms. Shafika Isaacs
Chief, Section for Technology and AI in Education, UNESCO
Ms. Lidija Kralj
Education Analyst, EduConLK, Croatia
Ms. Asha Singh Kanwar
Chair of the Governing Board, UNESCO-IITE
UNESCO provided welcome coffee and tea breaks throughout the event, as well as evening cocktail receptions on September 2, 3, and 4. These gatherings, complete with stunning views over Paris and the Eiffel Tower, offered opportunities for informal conversation and networking that were just as valuable as the formal sessions.
Disruptions: Taking the Pulse of AI in Education
AI’s influence on education is both profound and controversial. During the plenaries and fireside chats, some saw AI as a catalyst for system-wide disruption, reshaping everything from pedagogy and curriculum to assessment and governance. Others question whether this disruption is as universal or transformative as it is sometimes portrayed. The reality is nuanced and context dependent. Discussions at Digital Learning Week reflected this diversity of perspective. While some participants shared stories of AI-driven innovation in their classrooms or institutions, others emphasized the gap between rhetoric and reality, particularly in under-resourced settings. The question that surfaced again and again was: How does AI intersect with education across different social, cultural, and economic contexts? Who truly benefits from its expansion, and who risks being left behind?
Learning from A Centenary Dialogue
A highlight of the week were the Breakout Sessions. Breakout Session 1.1, where the UNESCO International Bureau of Education hosted a centenary dialogue on the future of curriculum in the age of AI. Moderated by Mr. Prateek Sibal, the featured speaker was Dr. Helen Crompton, who is the Executive Director of the Research Institute for Digital Innovation in Learning (RIDIL) at ODUGlobal and a Professor of Instructional Technology at Old Dominion University. With a Ph.D. in Mathematics Education and Technology in Education. She is recognized among the top two percent of scientists worldwide by Stanford, has led the development of influential frameworks such as the Artificial Intelligence in K–12 framework for the United Nations and the Social-Ecological Technology Integration (SETI) framework. Her expertise in technology integration and AI in education, along with her work shaping global standards and policy, brought valuable insights into the discussion on how curricula can evolve responsibly in the era of artificial intelligence.
Dilemmas: Reclaiming Human Agency in an AI Era
The dilemmas posed by AI are not just technical, but ethical and deeply human. As AI tools promise to close learning gaps through personalization and automation, they also raise new challenges. Digital surveillance, systemic bias, and the risk of eroding the relational aspects of teaching are all pressing concerns. There is a danger that overreliance on AI could reduce education to a technocratic exercise, sidelining the creativity, empathy, and judgment that only humans can provide. Educators and policymakers face difficult choices about resource allocation and priorities. As the author wrote before in an exclusive article for Stankevicius, AI’s Potemkin Vision: The Seduction of Educational Techno-Solutionism, the rush to integrate AI into schools might be Potemkin Village.
“Is the vision presented by OpenAI, Pearson, eFront, iSpring Learn, Curriculum Associates, Instructure, and countless others a genuine leap forward in human development? Or is it a Potemkin village – a façade of educational innovation – masking not only the technological limitations of these systems but also a subtler form of colonization?” (Cowin, J. (2024, November 18). AI’s Potemkin Vision: The seduction of educational techno-solutionism. Stankevicius. https://stankevicius.co/artificial-intelligence/ais-potemkin-vision-the-seduction-of-educational-techno-solutionism/ )
At the same time, as AI automates more tasks in the workplace, education systems must prepare students not just to coexist with machines, but to reclaim and redefine human agency.
Directions: Reimagining and Recalibrating Education Futures
Looking ahead, the challenge is to ensure that AI serves as a force for inclusive progress rather than deepening divides. This requires recalibrating key directions across policy, pedagogy, infrastructure, and governance. AI must foster learning equity, embed ethics by design, and keep human agency at the center. As AI systems become more sophisticated and autonomous, shaping their development is a shared societal responsibility. Education, as a public good, must direct AI to serve the pedagogical, cultural, and social needs of diverse communities. This means training not only AI-capable students and teachers but also education leaders who can engage responsibly with new technologies and help co-create the policies and norms that will govern their use.
Extinction Lessons for Education: Reimagining Assessment in an Era of Technological Disruption
My presentation, “Extinction lessons for education: Reimagining assessment in an era of technological disruption,” was scheduled as part of Parallel Session 2.5, focusing on AI and higher education. My session explored how traditional models of assessment are being disrupted by technological change. AI can now grade essays, provide feedback, and even generate new forms of knowledge. These advances prompt us to question what, how, and why we assess in education. In my talk, I argued that the future of assessment should not simply be about automation or efficiency. Instead, we need to develop holistic approaches that recognize the human dimensions of learning. Education is not just about transferring information or measuring outcomes; it is about fostering relationships, creativity, and critical thinking – qualities that cannot be fully captured by algorithms.
I addressed the emerging crisis in psychometric validity. AI systems are now measuring cognitive processes that traditional psychometric frameworks were never built to conceptualize. The longstanding models of content validity, criterion validity, and construct validity were developed to assess human-scale cognition, but today they are being stretched to accommodate complexities that far exceed their original intent. When learning analytics reveal patterns that are invisible to human observers and digital systems validate competencies across global networks without institutional gatekeepers, the very foundations of traditional assessment lose their relevance. As I emphasized, “We are not just retooling old systems with new technology. We are reimagining what it means to learn, to teach, and to be human in a digital age” (Cowin, 2025).
Our moderator Hannele Niemi from Finland provided thoughtful guidance during our session. I am also grateful to fellow presenters Rory McGreal, Teresa Romeu, Merel Pompe, and Montse Guitert for sharing their insightful research and contributing to such a dynamic and engaging discussion.
Conversations Beyond the Sessions
Some of the most meaningful moments of the week happened outside the formal program. Over coffee, tea, and during the evening receptions, I had the opportunity to connect with colleagues from around the world, such as Jackson Tshabalala, whose work is in Framing a First World Africa as Engagement Manager at Leva Foundation, a non-profit organization that aims to unlock opportunities and empower individuals through strategic initiatives in Johannesburg, South Africa. I also enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Tianchong Wang, Lecturer in Stem in Innovative Education Futures at Flinders University, Australia. We shared stories, exchanged insights, and sometimes challenged each other’s assumptions. These informal conversations are the heart of events like Digital Learning Week. They spark new collaborations and help translate ideas into action.
Looking Forward: The Future We Want
As I reflect on my experience at Digital Learning Week, I am struck by a few key takeaways. First, technology alone cannot solve the complex challenges facing education. Tech tools like AI are powerful, but they must be guided by ethical principles and a commitment to equity. Second, the global education community is vibrant, creative, and resilient. Despite differences in context and perspective, there is a shared determination to use digital transformation as a force for good. Finally, the future of education is not predetermined. It will be shaped by the choices we make together, by the policies we design, the practices we adopt, and the values we uphold.
Digital Learning Week is both an opportunity and a responsibility to chart new pathways towards inclusive, ethical, and human-centered education. I leave Paris grateful for the chance to learn, share, and contribute. As both a journalist and a presenter, I am inspired by the conversations, insights, and partnerships that emerged during the week. My hope is that we will continue to ask hard questions, imagine bold solutions, and keep the human spirit at the center of our professional journeys.
Dr. Jasmin (Bey) Cowin, a columnist for Stankevicius, employs the ethical framework of Nicomachean Ethics to examine how AI and emerging technologies shape human potential. Her analysis explores the risks and opportunities that arise from tech trends, offering personal perspectives on the interplay between innovation and ethical values. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
