The high-level meeting brought together the Minister of Education HE Dr. Ali Asghar Faani; Secretary General of the High Council for Education Dr Mehdi Navid and a number of other key policy-makers from the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, the Ministry of Health and Medical Education and the Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies.
UNESCO National Programme Officer for Communication and Information Mr. Tooraj Akbarlou, speaking on behalf of the UNESCO Tehran Cluster Office said UNESCO sought to help countries in finding local solutions to addressing the challenges that women were facing in using information and communication technology (ICT) to unlock educational opportunities, by facilitating their access to mobile devices and internet connectivity as well as training them on how to utilize mobile technology effectively. "If girls are to leave school ready to participate equally in the knowledge economy, then they too [like boys] will require the benefits of ICT-assisted instruction, including the knowledge, skills and attitudes imparted by using these tools”, he said.
In his statement, Mr. Akbarlou expressed the hope that the participants in the high-level meeting would walk away from the event with a deeper understanding of how mobile technology could be used to improve educational opportunities for women and girls around the world, and also proposed that the meeting would focus on and seek to find answers to four central questions:
How mobile technologies should be integrated into formal and informal learning environments; how mobile technology supported the professional development of teachers and in particular, assisted them working in resource-poor settings; how teachers and students could tailor and develop their own mobile learning resources and share these resources with others; and finally, what policy environments would help teachers effectively leverage new mobile technologies and improve educational outcomes.