News | Education | 8. November 2021
Fueling innovation in education: First network meeting of Red STEM Latinoamérica
Our network Red STEM Latinoamérica connects 85 institutions and their networks in 13 countries of the region. It was set up and is coordinated by the regional office of Siemens Stiftung in Santiago de Chile. The first major hybrid meeting in and from Bogota, Colombia, was held from November 9–11. These three days were devoted entirely to STEM education and innovation to promote STEM skills and anchor them even more strongly in countries’ curricula.
All speakers from the public, private and civil sectors shared their best practices and visions for the future. The focus of this year’s event was primarily partner institutions and the STEM agenda in Colombia in order to see how it is being systematically implemented on the local, regional and national levels. The joint goal was to advance STEM education as an interregional and cross-sectoral partnership, sharpen its profile, combine forces and create room for long-range educational innovations.
CREA – our new center for open educational resources in Latin America
On the opening day, our Managing Director Dr. Nina Smidt presented our work in education in Latin America and discussed her vision for the future of education.
The second day of the network meeting began with the go-live of CREA (Centro de Recursos Educativos Abiertos). This education portal focuses on STEM for teachers and learners and brings together the high-quality open educational resources of the partner institutions in the network with those of our Portal de Medios in one place. The content is free and accessible to everyone. Teachers can change it as needed and forward it to others. CREA currently contains 1,300 items of instructional material and will gradually be expanded with many more exciting offers for STEM instruction.
The regional network meeting “Encuentro Red STEM Latinoamérica” was held jointly by the international Siemens Stiftung as the coordinator of the Latin American STEM network, the Colombian Ministry of National Education, education authorities in Bogota and Medellin, UNESCO, the local foundation Fundación Siemens Colombia and the private Columbian university Universidad de la Sabana. The meeting will be held each year in a different country so that participants can discover how the other members and countries in the network integrate STEM education into their curricula.
The program can be found on the Encuentro Red STEM Latinoamérica website:
The recording of the livestream is available on the YouTube channel of Colombia Aprende and the Facebook channel of the Portal Educativo Red Académia: