From October 6th to 10th, Huang Ronghuai, co-director of the Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University and the UNESCO Chair on Artificial Intelligence and Education, was invited by the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) to attend the ASEFClassNet18 School Collaboration Conference in Maribor, Slovenia. The conference was hosted by the Asia-Europe Foundation, organized by the Institute of Anton Martin Slomšek in Slovenia, and co-organized by the International Research Center on Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI) under UNESCO and the Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI).

This year's conference, themed on “Ethical AI for Equitable Learning”, is an important extension of the ASEF Classroom Network’s over two decades of history. It aims to promote educational innovation, ethical governance, and inclusive practices in the era of artificial intelligence through a "co-creation" approach among teachers from Asia and Europe. At the welcome session, Zhang Lei, Deputy Executive Director of the Asia-Europe Foundation, pointed out in his speech that ASEFClassNet has become an important bridge connecting teachers from Asia and Europe and will continue to support cross-border cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence and educational innovation.

Since its establishment in 1998, ASEFClassNet has connected over 2,800 high school teachers and teachers for vocational education from Asia and Europe, promoting 430 cross-border cooperation projects and 125 Innovative Teaching Practices (ITP). The 18th project, with the core theme of “Effective, Inclusive and Ethical Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) Design”, lasted for 7 months and covered five stages: online training, self-directed learning, team creation, teaching practice, and on-site presentation. Finally, representatives of teachers from 42 countries were invited to attend the event in Slovenia.

During the five-day offline conference, 15 teams of primary and secondary school teachers from Asia and Europe presented their innovative achievements in areas such as AI-enabled teaching, cross-cultural learning, sustainable development education, and enhancement of digital literacy. They also participated in the “Innovative Teaching Practice Competition”. Huang Ronghui was invited to serve as an expert judge, together with representatives from UNESCO, the European Commission, and several international experts in the field of artificial intelligence and education, to review and guide the innovative designs, inclusive teaching, and ethical use of AI tools of each team.

The Evaluation Activity for Innovative Teaching Practice Competition

During the meeting, Huang Ronghui also had in-depth exchanges with several international experts, including John Shawe-Taylor, the director of the Artificial Intelligence Research Center of UNESCO and a professor at University College London (UCL), Abtar Darshan Singh, a professor at the Asia-Pacific University of Science and Technology and the host of an UNESCO chair, Mitja Jermol, the host of the UNESCO Open Educational Resources and Open Learning Technology Chair and the project leader of the OE4BW at the Josef Stefan Institute, Andrej Flogie, the principal of The Institute of Anton Martin Slomšek in Slovenia, and Igor Pesek, a professor in the field of digital education at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics of the University of Maribor. All parties conducted practical discussions on the AI education ethical framework, teacher capacity building and international collaboration mechanisms.

Professor Huang Ronghui held a meeting with Dr. Andrej Flogie and Professor Igor Pesek.

The ASEF ClassNet18 conference this year further strengthened the cooperation foundation between Asia and Europe in the field of integrating artificial intelligence and education, providing a platform for teachers to engage in cross-cultural learning and practice, and also offering new ideas and paradigms for the global ethical governance and innovative application of AI education.