350 education stakeholders gathered in Spanish Lookout today for Belize's first National EdTech Summit. The goal is to integrate technology into education so that classrooms can become more interactive for the students. The Minister of Education explained that today's presentations are augmented by exhibits.

Oscar Requena, Minister of Education, Science & Technology
"Today we're actually having presenters making presentations on several topics of how you can incorporate technology into the classroom. But this is supported by what you saw upstairs, the exhibition that we have up there. We have several areas on exhibition and I believe the big thing here is the 501Academy and all the different platforms that can be found and it's so amazing, you know, if our teachers are going to be teaching about Belizean History, they can go to Belize archives. There are teachers who want to help our students with special needs, there's a particular area that they can do to so all in all really what we're hoping to do is to help our teachers appreciate and understand technology has a very important role in supporting education in the classroom."

And many of the resources - including 501Academy - are currently accessible for teachers and students. Requena added that one thing that stood out to him were robotics kits the Ministry provides.

Oscar Requena, Minister of Education, Science & Technology
"What I saw was the whole use of for instance the robotics area. It's so amazing. We have these special kits that we know have at the Ministry of Education, we are making them available to schools and teachers and students can actually use these kits to put together the different robots. I saw one where they can actually construct like a weather instrument that can actually provide information on the different climate conditions and that kind of thing. It's just amazing. Back in my days, we did not have access to all this technology. But we are happy, the world is changing and we as the Ministry of Education, we continue to be very innovative."

And one of the highlights of the summit was the launch of Avatar Buddy, which is a helpful AI tool that can be used in the classroom. The co-founder explained more about it.

Stephanie Sylvestre, Co-Founder, Avatar Buddy
"Avatar Buddy is a company that makes AI buddies and digital twins and today you saw on display some of the AI buddies that we created, 501 Historian, 501 Teacher Assistant, and Kriol 501 Historian. And so the 501 Historian is configured to act like an archivist to go through the archive and pull back information in a way that an archivist would and the Kriol 501 Historian is configured to bring back the information in both Kriol and English and it's just a part of being able to preserve our Kriol language. I'm hoping that we can add the other indigenous languages in short order. And then 501 Teacher Assistant is configured to help teachers with their lesson plans and how to leverage the curriculum available from the ministry."

"And I think that eventually, giving it to students in a way that students understand it's not the end product but it's a starting point that you then have to use to be able to customize it so you still have to learn the content area that you're asking it to help you with."

More information about the online resources available to teachers and students can be found on the Ministry of Education's website.