Leonel Fernández Advocates for the Use of Technology to Promote Education and Spanish Language

Former Dominican President Said That Spanish Cannot Be a Subordinate Language

The former President of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernández, advocated on Wednesday, December 10th 2014, for the information technology and communication to be used to advance education, and thus ensure the expansion of Spanish language, which he said cannot remain a subordinate language.

"Technology has significantly
influenced all aspects of life," proclaimed the former president, who suggested breaking the language gap between the online content published in English, given that they do not correspond, in quantity and quality, with those disclosed in Spanish.

Fernández, who is also President of Global Foundation for Democracy and Development (GFDD) made his statements during a lecture he gave at the Latin American and Caribbean Media and Information Literacy Forum,
taking place at the headquarters of the National Autonomous University of México (UNAM, by its Spanish acronym).

The event aims to promote discussion on the challenges facing Latin America in terms of media and information literacy.

"When the desire to use technology to boost Spanish and other languages is achieved, the linguistic and cultural gap that currently prevails in the cyberspace world will disappear, leading to a new era of
collaboration, interaction, and more exchanges between the people and nations with different levels of development," said Fernández.

In his dissertation, entitled "MOOCs and Linguistic-Cultural Gap: Causes, Challenges and Opportunities," Fernández highlighted the impact the massive open online courses (MOOC) has in the worldwide higher education level, and at the same time, he outlined the trends of this mechanism in the future, regretting that
only 4% of these courses is offered in Spanish.

Similarly, the former President stressed the opportunity offered by the MOOC system to promote quality higher education wherever there is internet, and the great potential of this mechanism to widen the linguistic and cultural gap that currently dominates cyberspace.

"The evolution of MOOCs will have an impact, not only on how to teach in the future, but what will be taught," predicted
Fernández, noting that there is a growing tendency to develop such courses without the intervention of formal platforms, plus it has created a movement to recognize the academic value of the knowledge acquired through the MOOCs.

"Spanish cannot remain a subordinate language"

In the case of Spanish MOOCs, Fernández explained that the distance between the platforms in this language and those in the Anglo world are
abysmal, which he attributes to the high costs, restriction policies to access and technological aspects.

"Spanish cannot remain a subordinate language in the online education system, and especially in the MOOCs courses," stated the former President.