This week we’ve designed and prototyped a tool to make our website more useful during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. We want to enable decision-makers to make informed choices about if, when and how to use EdTech during this crisis. We’re building something to help you find education responses by governments and EdTech tools that support these responses.

This is part of our coronavirus (COVID-19) and EdTech series.

Written by Anna Riggall (Head of Research) and Tony McAleavy (Research Director), Education Development Trust

As the horror of Covid-19 became apparent, governments around the world closed schools in their attempts to control the spread of the virus. According to UNESCO, schools are closed in 191 countries, impacting 90% of the world’s enrolled learners.

This blog reflects on two studies recently commissioned by the EdTech Hub and carried out by our team at Education Development Trust. The reports tackled questions relevant to managing education continuity and quality during school closures. One report examined the evidence about the best pedagogy for remote learning and the other focused on country responses to the provision of educational continuity – looking for what appears to be working. 

This is part of our coronavirus (COVID-19) and EdTech series.

This week we kicked off our project to make our website more useful during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This is part of the EdTech Hub’s strategy to respond to the pandemic, by providing rapid, actionable information and advice to government decision-makers. We want to help decision-makers navigate the opportunities and challenges of EdTech in a time of crisis. We’re collaborating with Public Digital on this project, and they are helping us with this user research.

This is part of our coronavirus (COVID-19) and EdTech series.

Une chose est sûre avec le coronavirus – il n’a pas de frontière. Depuis son émergence, le coronavirus a causé la fermeture d’écoles dans le monde entier. Ce nouveau blog post s’intéresse aux près de 300 millions de francophones dans le monde et aux leçons que nous pouvons tirer de leurs systèmes d’éducation face au coronavirus pour démontrer l’importance d’une réponse globale, en particulier par la collaboration des pays de langues communes, pour assurer une continuité de l’éducation pour tous. A la lumière des expériences de fermetures d’écoles dans plusieurs pays francophones – aux niveaux de revenus différents – nous nous intéresserons à leurs réponses et à leurs possibilités de collaboration. 

This is part of our coronavirus (COVID-19) and EdTech series.

One thing about coronavirus is clear — it does not respect borders. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in school closures across the world. With about 300 million French speakers worldwide, here we consider some initial lessons from francophone education systems, their EdTech response, and the importance of cooperation of countries who share the same language. In light of school closures across many Francophone countries – all with differing income levels – we consider their differentiated responses and if there is more scope for these countries to collaborate. 

This is part of our coronavirus (COVID-19) and EdTech series.

Every week that passes we see the number of classrooms closed due to COVID-19 increase. During these unprecedented times, the Hub’s mission — to increase the use of evidence-based decisions around EdTech — is more important than ever. We must make sure learning goes on.

This is part of our coronavirus (COVID-19) and EdTech series.

Written by Björn Haßler, Director of Research, EdTech Hub. This blog post was originally posted on the Open Development & Education website.

The COVID-19 pandemic has far-reaching consequences for public health, including socio-economic issues. The pandemic also has consequences for education. However, in this blog post, I argue that these educational consequences will be felt more by (high-income populations in) high-income countries than low-income populations in low- and middle-income countries, such as the rural poor, who already had low learning levels prior to the outbreak.

This is part of our coronavirus (COVID-19) and EdTech series.

While technology is a potentially powerful tool in low-resourced contexts, technology use is not always possible or appropriate, as previous Hub blogs have asserted. The following blog emphasises the particular role that communities can play in supporting continued learning opportunities for the billions of children whose education has been disrupted by the COVID-19 crisis. This blog post also appears on the UKFIET site.