Chennai, Jan 31 (UNI) The First G20 Education Working Group (EWG) Meeting on ‘The Role of Digital Technologies in Education’ was held at the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) on Tuesday.

The EWG, under India’s Presidency of G20, has a key objective to identify areas/themes to promote possible research and academic collaboration among educational institutions in G20 member countries.

The G20 Seminar was held at IIT Madras Research Park (IITMRP) as part of ‘Sherpa Track – 1st EWG Meeting’ from today to February 2.

In addition, an exhibition with 50 stalls is also being organized as part of this grand event. These stalls showcased some of the research, innovation and cutting-edge technologies.

Delivering the inaugural address, India Chair, K Sanjay Murthy, Secretary, Union Ministry of Education, said, “We will be organizing four meetings of the EWG in the coming months at Amritsar, Bhubaneswar and Pune."

The four priority areas for deliberations are issues of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy, Tech-enabled learning, Future of work and Research and innovation collaboration.

"A unique feature of all these meetings under India’s G20 Presidency is that we have decided for the first time, to have seminars and exhibitions on each of the four priority areas in addition to the deliberations under the Working Group. This gives us a chance to broad base our discussions with enriching inputs from sector experts and from all members and invited countries", he said.

The exhibition on the side-lines is intended to make the sharing of best experiences more tangible and hence, more effective, he added.

(With UNI inputs)