A/HRC/32/37 issues such as religion and culture and the work of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, and spoke of the challenges to women’s equitable access to education. 24. On 14 March, the Special Rapporteur participated, as a panellist, in an event organized by the Permanent Mission of the Plurinational State of Bolivia to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva, and addressed the education-related goals in the post-2015 sustainable development agenda. 25. On 15 March, the Special Rapporteur met with representatives of the Platform on the Right to Education to talk about the work being done in fulfilment of his mandate. III. The digital revolution in education 26. Digital technologies 1 are becoming ubiquitous and provide vast opportunities for new forms of connections and collaboration, as knowledge and information can be digitized and transmitted electronically. 2 They are transforming learning and teaching, and the everyday lives of academics and students. As Nicholas Carr wrote in The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, “the future of knowledge and culture no longer lies in books ... or records or CDs. It lies in digital files shot through our universal medium at the speed of light”.3 27. Information and communications technologies 4 are used to access digital content (the digital versions of analogue originals, such as scanned textbooks). Increasingly, content is being designed for digital use. Online education materials and courses, etextbooks and video and audio files streamed on the Internet, as all of which are modes of e-learning, 5 are revolutionizing the provision of education. Broadband services 6 and information and communications technologies can play a fundamental role in making 1 2 3 4 5 6 6 UNESCO defines “digitization” as the creation of digital objects from physical, analogue originals by means of a scanner, camera or other electronic device (see www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/mow/digitization_guidelines_for_we b.pdf). Digital content involves the creation, sharing and accessing of content in digital forms, including online courses, videos, digital libraries and texts, games and applications. In the area of education, such content is moving from static reproductions of textbooks and learning materials towards interactive education software and online learning products. Susan D’Antoni, ed., The Virtual University: Models and Messages — Lessons from Case Studies (UNESCO, Paris, 2006), p. 51. Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (W.W. Norton and Co., New York and London, 2010), p. 41. “Information and communications technologies” is an umbrella term that includes any communication device or application, including radio, television, cellular telephones, computers, network hardware and software, satellite systems and the various services and applications associated with them, such as videoconferencing and distance learning (see http://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/ICT-information-and-communications-technology-ortechnologies). OECD defines “e-learning” as the use of information and communications technologies to enhance and/or support learning in tertiary education, whether provided online, using computers or any other tool that enables distance learning. See OECD, “E-learning in tertiary education” (2005). The term “broadband” refers to multiple aspects of network services, including high-speed access to the Internet and/or the services and applications available through broadband networks. See http://broadbandtoolkit.org/1.2.