Uruguay and Brazil exchange experiences in audiovisual education

Teachers and students make progress on educational innovation through the strengthening of audiovisual competencies and skills.

Innovation, applied to different learning modalities, is one of the key aspects to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education, as Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 4 reads.

In this regard, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed significant work is still required so that all people can have access to a good, uninterrupted education, adapted to new contexts in which people are increasingly participating in non-face-to-face environments and approach learning in a different way.

As confirmed by several investigations such as Perspectives 2015. The use of audiovisuals in the classroom, audiovisual education becomes especially important in a world where the use of images is part of almost everyone’s regular life, especially that of students. This document concludes that “if images and audiovisuals are incorporated into teaching, they not only change the way the world is perceived and analyzed, but also the way it is studied and transmitted, the way people learn about it and how they interact with reality and with others” (Communication and Education Cabinet of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, 2015, page 6).

In this context, a bilateral South-South Cooperation initiative between Uruguay (recipient) and Brazil (provider) on audiovisual education as a means for innovation, stands out. The project, approved in the framework of the 2018-2020 Bilateral Program, aims to improve the quality of elementary and middle school education through the implementation of new innovative teaching methodologies based on audiovisual education and on the application of new technological instruments for the development of digital citizenship (AUCI, 2021). This exchange of experiences was led by the Fluminense Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFF by its Portuguese acronym) and the Directorate-General for Technical-Professional Education of Uruguay (UTU by its Spanish acronym), with the participation of LabEducine Unespar of Curitiba (Brazil) and the Uruguayan audiovisual training program Cineduca, which is aimed at students and professors pursuing teaching careers.

According to the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC by its Portuguese acronym), this initiative began through a workshop with Cineduca in Uruguay, in which three Brazilian experts transferred the experience “Inventing with Difference” (a Brazilian film, education and human rights project) (ABC, 2021).

After that first meeting, a diverse and creative set of activities was carried out, such as workshops for public school teachers and, for example, an audiovisual marathon where 42 students from the two countries presented their short movies, which portrayed the collective narratives of their own territories. All this material was previously remotely prepared during 3 days (AUCI, 2021). It should also be noted that, throughout the project, the work in schools of both countries included the use of the “Filme-Carta” (Movie-Letter) method, an audiovisual education methodology by which students film their own letters and send them online to recipients in another country (ABC, 2021).

Please find an audiovisual example of this interesting initiative in the following link:

September 2021

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Source: SEGIB based on the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC by its Portuguese acronym, 2021), the Uruguayan Agency for International Cooperation (AUCI by its Spanish acronym, 2021) and the Communication and Education Cabinet of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (2015).

Photograph: Compare Fibre on Unsplash