In March 2022, EdTech Hub’s executive director Verna Lalbeharie joined partners from the Aga Khan Foundation’s (AKF) Schools2030 programme for a school visit in Tanzania’s Temeke district. The visit coincided with the Utafiti Elimu Tanzania conference, of which AKF and EdTech Hub were co-sponsors, as well as data-collection for one the studies in the EdTech Hub research portfolio. Toangoma primary…
In March 2022, I joined the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and spent a significant amount of time in a hall dedicated to exploring how things will be different 4 years from now (4YFN). The hall was full of startups showcasing the latest products for urban mobility, healthcare, education, and more. 4YFN invited me to moderate a fireside chat on…
Building a platform to allow governments to quickly select, approve, and reuse existing Open Educational Resources As the Covid-19 crisis led to school closures in March 2020, governments all over the world scrambled to move to remote teaching. But many countries struggled to find enough content to cover large parts of their curricula. Especially in Eastern and Southern Africa, fragile…
Kenya’s remote learning offerings are an example for the region — but how did they come about and what model does Kenya provide? The recent disruptions in education caused by Covid led many countries to quickly implement remote learning interventions. Kenya’s Educational Media Directorate — part of the Kenya Institute for Curriculum Development (KICD) — provides a model for implementing…
In recent years, interest in the ways that educational technology (EdTech) can personalise learning has increased. Personalised learning approaches build on pedagogical models which enable students to access content and learning experiences that are matched to their level. Recently, research has begun to focus on the way that EdTech tools can support the learner-centred and flexible benefits of personalised learning,…
Introduction The use of messaging in education is listed as the only ‘great buy’ in the World Bank’s comparative analysis of cost-effectiveness in EdTech interventions. But, the different studies on messaging cited in the report represent different approaches and contexts. One analysis of nudge messaging in education suggests that interventions often provide diverging results, with outcomes dependent on context. Two…
This guest blog from UNICEF and World Bank expounds more on the recently launched remote learning resource packs and how the tools can be used to deliver quality remote learning. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, as 1.6 billion schoolchildren were affected by school closures, countries around the world introduced remote learning as a crisis-response. This led to an…
The Prioritizing Learning During Covid-19 report, recently launched by the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel, reinforces a well-known but often overlooked refrain about EdTech: it is not a silver bullet. Using evidence from Covid responses, the report advises policymakers responding to learning loss caused by the pandemic to use existing EdTech, and focus on good pedagogy that is supported, rather…
Dr Noran Fouad is a Research Associate for Digital Pathways at Oxford University and has recently published a journal paper inviting policymakers and researchers to explore the links between EdTech and cybersecurity (Fouad, 2021). We sat down with her to discuss her paper and better understand how evidence related to cybersecurity could be used to improve EdTech programmes and policies.…
This guest post from The Busara Center for Behavioral Economics team members focuses on understanding non-structural barriers to achieving equity in education through EdTech. Classical economists put forward that “more is always better,” suggesting that having more options should always improve your situation (or at least keep it the same) no matter what the additional choice is, or when the information…
