‘I always thought the teacher works alone, indoors. What I needed to be part of a community; just in time, Comunidad Atenea arrived’. Silvina from Argentina expresses one of the problems we are solving: with schools struggling to cope with closures & reopenings, technology as the main channel for communication with students, & teachers with lack of training, CA brings an effective & human solution
We discovered that promoting an atmosphere of trust and empathy among teachers is essential to unlock the potential of technology. That is precisely what we are doing: building this powerful community to promote the meaningful use of digital tools.
We developed #AteneaExperience: a one-week learning journey. Bringing teachers together across borders to join a 5-day learning journey focused on a different theme, in which they share their views and create initiatives together. #AteneaExperience offers an experience based on learning by doing, collaboration, and peer mentoring. With a hands-on methodology and personalized training, teachers develop skills such as collaboration, problem-solving, communication, and critical thinking. 4,098 educational initiatives have been implemented as part of the challenges which reached 160,052 students. 99.5% of the graduates would recommend this experience to a colleague and 94.6% consider these experiences enrich their professional development.
In 1 year, we have reached +50,000 unique visitors from 104 countries, 15,123 members, and the teachers that participated in the #AteneaExperience editions reached 510,979 students. It was organic growth and has spread by word of mouth.
We created an alliance with TikTok to launch a learning challenge for Latin American teachers with the hashtag #aprendeentiktok. We offered training in the pedagogical use of TikTok. #aprendeentiktok videos have more than 29 billion visualizations and #comunidadatenea videos more than 578 thousand visualizations.
We were selected by the McCourt School of Public Policy of Georgetown University as a case study to carry out an impact and scalability evaluation of Comunidad Atenea that included a pilot with Spanish-speaking teachers in the US.
Anyone can go to comunidadatenea.org and become a member. Comunidad Atenea is free, open, and accessible through any device. All the best practices and digital tools proposed by the teachers are free, and the #AteneaExperience practical challenges can be implemented in different school contexts, taking into account the educational level, the available resources, and the expected impact on learning
