Your Name and Title: Catalina Valenzuela, contributor 

School, Library, or Organization Name: www.techcetera.co

Co-Presenter Name(s): Samir Estefan - co founder 

Country from Which You Will Present: USA/ Colombia

Language in Which You Will Present: English

Target Audience (such as primary school teachers, high school administrators, students, etc.): Policy and leadership, innovative start ups

Short Session Description (one line): 

Techcetera: a tech blog disseminating technology education trends in Spanish and becoming a key source of technology news and analysis for a Spanish speaking audience. 

Full Session Description (one paragraph minimum):

At Techcetera, we believe that technology and education go hand on hand. We are convinced that technology access can break inequity barriers and can improve schools, organizations bottom lines and the lives of the learners whether they are children or adults.

Techecetera is reporting key technological trends in the educational sector. We have written about the impact of e learning in local and regional higher education systems. We have also interview university professors that are using technology in their classes. We have provided reviews of different apps such as Wordle. We have suggested ideas to use social media in the classroom. 

Euromonitor reported that in Latin America smartphones sales grew 61% in 2012 year - on year and tablets sales grew above 100%. Latin American governments have invested heavily in the last few years to increase the access to hardware and software in their schools with patchy results that are consistent with what research is showing elsewhere including the US and the UK. At Techcetera, we have reported strategies to help teachers and professors to be more digital literate and to promote teaching pedagogies aligned with what the XXI century economy requires such as more creative and collaborative citizens. 

We want to be prepared and to help our readership to be ready for the next wave of investment that we are forecasting will be to improve teaching quality. For example, the IADB has stated that it will invest mostly on improving teaching quality that means among other to better trained teachers. Technology based learning and teaching offers a great opportunity to ameliorate teaching quality. Therefore we believe that teachers, administrators and policy makers will start needing more and more sophisticated information in Spanish to be able to implement more tech based pedagogical strategies. 

Moreover, technology investment is also a key budgetary issue in households. We want families to be able to maximized their experience and productivity from their devices including tablets and smartphones. Families would like to make the most of their gadgets for entertainment and productivity and certainly for education. Techcetera offers content for those needs also.

Finally, Techcetera is looking for partnerships with education services providers to offer in Latin American countries courses such as Digiteen and Flat Classroom Project that promote digital citizenship and globalized project based learning. 

Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session:

www.techcetera.co

@TECH_cetera