Colombia Aprende

What Colombia Aprende is

Colombia Aprende is the online learning platform of Colombia's Ministerio de Educación Nacional (Ministry of National Education). Its virtual campus opens with "Aprendemos hoy para transformar la enseñanza" (we learn today to transform teaching) and promises "Educación en línea de alta calidad para profesores, estudiantes y comunidades educativas", high-quality online education for teachers, students and educational communities. In practice the campus is a professional development school for the public education workforce: classroom teachers, school leaders, trainers and the staff of regional education departments. Next to it, the ECO site gives teachers and students a large bank of English learning material, and the FranCo project supports French teaching in public secondary schools. The campus footer carries the ministry's address in Bogotá and the line "Una plataforma de Colombia Aprende". The interface can be switched between two variants of Spanish, international and Colombian, and English.

The virtual campus

The campus home page shows featured courses "para el desarrollo profesional docente" (for teachers' professional development):

• Centro de Recursos miRED tuRED, a center of digital educational resources made by teachers for teachers.
• Expedición LEO, presented as an adventure in mediation through reading, writing and oral expression.
• Puesta en marcha de la biblioteca escolar, on setting up a school library.
• Fundamentos de escritura para formadores, writing fundamentals for trainers.

Courses can be browsed by the level a teacher works at: early childhood education, basic education, secondary (media) and higher education. They are also grouped into programs "creadas para fortalecer la práctica educativa y el liderazgo pedagógico" (created to strengthen educational practice and pedagogical leadership): the Plan Nacional de Lectura, Escritura y Oralidad (national reading, writing and orality plan), educational use of ICT, the program listed as Maestros formando maestros and Todos a Aprender (teachers training teachers, all to learn), education in rural areas, academic peers under decree 1330, education departments and communities, school leadership, and a community of practice called SRPA.

The campus has an FAQ on enrollment, access and course certificates, and accessibility controls for contrast and text size. Support runs through the ministry: a switchboard in Bogotá, a toll-free line from the rest of the country, and a separate technical support line, staffed Monday to Thursday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and on Fridays from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

ECO: English for Colombia

ECO Web 2.0 "stands for English for Colombia Web, where you can easily search for engaging and easy to access contents for teachers and students." It has a Teach section and a Learn section. The toolkit gathers resources to teach English created by the ministry and its partners, radio programs, reading material, the ministry's textbook collection, a repository of English language tests, curricular and methodological guidelines, and lesson plans and learning guides written by public school teachers.

At its center is the National ELT Resources Repository, where users can "Browse more than 3,000 contents to teach and learn English." Filters cover age group (kids or teens), skill (grammar, listening, reading, speaking, vocabulary, writing), level (PreA1, A1, A2, A2.1, A2.2, B1), type (activity books, audio, board games, classroom posters, evaluations, flashcards, games, icebreakers, lesson plans, songs, radio programs, readers, teaching resources, textbooks) and format (mp3 or PDF). The National Bilingual Program page adds that ECO Web was built in 2021 with more than 5,000 resources, including textbooks for primary and secondary school, an assessment bank for secondary school covering the four communication skills, the suggested English curriculum, and material from partners such as the United States Embassy, the British Council and Peace Corps.

ECO Radio, described as a strategy of the ministry with the British Council, runs two series: ECO Kids 2.0 for children from 6 to 11 years old and ECO Teens 2.0 for teens between 12 and 18. The first season has 16 episodes per series, each with a downloadable episode, segments and a learning guide. Teachers get a Teacher Guide with lesson plans for each episode and a Teacher Toolkit 2.0 of videos, five per series, such as "Teaching English through the radio", "How to develop critical thinking skills" and "How to help students develop leadership skills", plus one on English for specific purposes. According to the program page, ECO Radio was aimed at rural areas with low connectivity and reached the country through community radio stations, ECO Web and a podcast.

The same page describes #BeThe1Challenge, an app built by the National Bilingual Program with the British Council that gamifies practice for standardized English tests for students in grades 4 to 11 and gives teachers real-time progress data. It runs on Android and Apple devices with or without a connection, has a Windows version, and comes with a dashboard for teachers, school leaders and education departments.

Teacher development in the National Bilingual Program

The National Bilingual Program page sets the frame: a functional plurilingualism approach that recognizes Colombia's 65 native languages, 2 creole languages, the Rrom language and Colombian Sign Language, with a target of B1 in English for students in grade 11. Its 2018 to 2022 report describes Inspiring Teachers (Maestros que inspiran), a professional development scheme that included:

• MasterClasses streamed live on Colombia Aprende's YouTube channel, 26 sessions between 2021 and 2022.
• One-to-one pedagogical support pairing an English teaching expert with a public school teacher.
• ELT innovation clubs that use Design Thinking.
• "English For Teachers", synchronous virtual courses for teachers and school leaders that also certified participants' language level.
• Teachers Abroad immersions of 1 to 4 weeks in the United Kingdom, India and Colombia's coffee region.
• A 120-hour Diplomado en enseñanza del inglés (diploma course in English teaching) for secondary teachers, built in five modules.
• Training for school heads on writing institutional bilingualism plans.

FranCo for French teaching

FranCo (Français en Colombie) joined the National Bilingual Program and the French Embassy in Colombia in 2020 to strengthen French as a foreign language in secondary education in 20 public schools. Its teacher training includes language refresher courses, methodology updates and DELF preparation workshops, giving teachers "una validación oficial de su nivel de francés" (an official validation of their French level). The schools received 2,347 teaching kits, licenses for the Culturethèque digital library with more than 460,000 online resources, and free access to IFcinema for screening French films with Spanish subtitles.

Cost and fit

The campus pages show no course fees. Colombia Aprende suits public school teachers, school heads and regional education staff in Colombia who want courses tied to national programs in reading, ICT, rural education and leadership, and it is a strong source for English and French teachers who need graded material, radio lessons and test practice for their classes. Students can use the ECO Learn section, the radio series and the app on their own. The caveat is scope: the content is built around Colombia's curriculum and public school system, and much of the National Bilingual Program page reports on the 2018 to 2022 period, so a teacher should look at the campus catalog for what is open now.