INFORDEPE & UNICEF Teach Timorese Teachers to Use ChatGPT for Portuguese Instruction

In February 2024, Timor-Leste's National Institute for Training of Teachers and Education Professionals (INFORDEPE), the Ministry of Education and UNICEF announced a digital literacy training programme backed by a US$1.1 million UNICEF commitment, targeting 600 teachers from pre-school to secondary level across 30 schools in the municipalities of Ainaro, Ermera and Liquiça, delivered as one-week trainings beginning March 2024.
By August 2024, UNICEF-run practical workshops had reached 154 of an eventual 172 teachers who completed general ICT training — covering email, Google Chrome and Google Search — and were specifically shown how to use ChatGPT and the AMO Translator app so students could look up unfamiliar Portuguese words, ask the AI to explain them, and see worked examples, addressing a persistent gap in Portuguese proficiency in a largely Tetum- and local-language-speaking school system.
Alongside the training, UNICEF — with funding from VINCI Energies via the French National Committee for UNICEF — handed over US$198,430 of ICT equipment (300 tablets, 32 laptops, 31 smart TVs, 30 generators, 32 projectors) to the same 30 schools, intended to eventually benefit around 17,469 students, 90 out-of-school adolescents and 659 teachers.
The published figures are reach and input metrics — teachers trained, equipment delivered — rather than measured learning outcomes: no study has yet assessed whether ChatGPT-assisted vocabulary look-up improved students' Portuguese proficiency, and as of the latest reporting the programme had trained little more than a quarter of its 600-teacher target.

Read the full analysis: https://en.tatoli.tl/2024/02/26/infordepe-to-offer-digital-literacy-training-for-600-teachers/19/