AFRICA’S COVID-19 OPPORTUNITY

Posted on by EdTech Hub in blog
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This blog post is a cross-post from EdTech Hub‘s blog https://edtechhub.org/2020/09/17/africas-covid-19-opportunity/ (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0). The blog post was written on the 17th of September 2020.

Educators in Africa are optimistic about the opportunities that Covid-19 brings for reform and innovation in education. 

That’s the headline from a survey eLearning Africa recently conducted, in which 1,600 education and technology professionals from 52 countries in Africa were asked for their thoughts on the longer-term effects of the pandemic.

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Five lessons learnt from Bangladesh’s experience responding to COVID-19

Posted on by Tom Kaye, Iqbal Hossain and Md. Afzal Hossain Sarwar in blog
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Written by OpenDevEd’s Tom Kaye, Md. Afzal Hossain Sarwar of a2i, and Iqbal Hossain from UNICEF. This blog was first published on 15th July 2020 as part of the coronavirus (COVID-19) and EdTech series on The EdTech Hub website under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

In recent months, the EdTech Hub has produced a range of documents to support and guide countries as they develop and implement plans to help students keep learning during school closures. Some of the work we have produced includes:

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Building effective COVID-19 education response plans: Insights from Africa and Asia

Posted on by EdTech Hub and Tom Kaye in blog
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This blog post is a cross-post from EdTech Hub‘s blog https://edtechhub.org/2020/06/25/building-effective-covid-19-education-response-plans-insights-from-africa-and-asia/ (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0). The blog post was written by Jenn Cotter Otieno, Erik Kimenyi, and Tom Kaye on the 25th of June 2020.

As countries around the world rapidly respond to the educational challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic many countries have begun to leverage technology to provide educational continuity. We at the EdTech Hub are working with many countries to help them design interventions to support learning during this crisis. The first question we are asked by our counterparts in these countries is: How can we design an effective COVID-19 education sector response plan?

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Reflecting on epistemic injustices in open and online education

Posted on by Björn Haßler in #BlackLivesMatter, blog, COVID-19
Reading Time: 6 minutes

In memory of Hector Pieterson and the hundreds of student protesters that were brutally murdered by police on the 16 June 1976 in the Soweto Uprising in South Africa. The Soweto Uprising refers to the protests by black South African high school students during apartheid against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction.

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Supporting innovation in the time of COVID: What we’ve done and what we’ll do next

Posted on by EdTech Hub in blog
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This blog post is a cross-post from EdTech Hub‘s blog https://edtechhub.org/2020/06/02/supporting-innovation-in-the-time-of-covid-what-weve-done-and-what-well-do-next/ (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0). The blog post was written by Alice Carter on the 2nd of June 2020.

When COVID-19 emerged as a clear and present danger, we in the Hub innovation team were forced to rethink our plans for 2020. We previously told you about our work and how it looks to support and scale innovation with real people in real life. Now we had to reassess what this would look like and how it could be most effective in responding to global school closures. 

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Activating local study-groups for children’s learning—an equitable EdTech response?

Posted on by EdTech Hub in blog
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This blog post is a cross-post from EdTech Hub‘s blog https://edtechhub.org/2020/05/29/activating-local-study-groups-for-childrens-learning-an-equitable-edtech-response/ (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0). The blog post was written by Tom Power on the 29th of May 2020.

An equitable educational response to the COVID school closures must recognise that, in low and middle-income countries, as shown by UNICEF data most children affected by such closures do not have access to the internet. Policymakers and educators must then find ways to provide learning opportunities offline. Learning does not happen just by giving children educational materials—children also need time, space and support. 

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From the Helpdesk: Observations and guidance on educational response planning during the COVID-19 crisis

Posted on by EdTech Hub and Tom Kaye in blog
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This post originally appeared here on 20th May 2020 under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

Written by Rachel Chuang, Tom Kaye, Caitlin Moss Coflan & Arjun Upadhyay (EdTech Hub Helpdesk Management Team)

Amid one of the biggest global disruptions to schooling in living memory, countries are quickly developing distance education responses for students. The EdTech Hub’s Helpdesk is providing evidence-informed responses to requests for support from governments and their partners as they face this challenge. 

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Why the COVID Crisis Is Not EdTech’s Moment in Africa

Posted on by administrator in blog, COVID-19
Reading Time: 6 minutes

Author: Lee CrawFurd, Centre for Global Development

This blog was originally posted on the Center for Global Development blog on the 18th May 2020. Open Development & Education is part of The EdTech Hub and the data used here was from the EdTech Hub’s database of interventions. This database, which was initially limited to sub-Saharan Africa, now has a global scope. While the data is still partial (e.g. doesn’t include broader lists of edtech startups from South Africa or Ikeja, Abuja, and Lagos in Nigeria) the insights made in this article are extremely valuable. Even if the estimates were off by a factor of 2 or 3, points about the optimal use of digital learning still hold true. As the blog suggests, there is a need to increase the database’s representation of interventions in other regions. Please add your EdTech intervention to help us grow it!

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EdTech call for ideas: What have we learned from the applications?

Posted on by EdTech Hub in blog
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This blog post is a cross-post from EdTech Hub‘s blog https://edtechhub.org/2020/05/11/edtech-call-for-ideas-what-have-we-learned-from-the-applications/ (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0). The blog post was written by Asad Rahman on the 11th of May 2020.

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

On 21st April, we launched a call for ideas for EdTech in responses to coronavirus and the lockdown of schools around the world. 

Three weeks later, we’ve taken a slice of the first 100 responses and analysed the data. Combining this with conversations our team is having every day with technologists and innovators around the world, we’ve sought to answer: what do these innovators need right now? In future blogs, we’ll cut the data in different ways to answer other questions.

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Who has what? Assessing who has access to what devices in the education response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Posted on by Björn Haßler in blog, COVID-19
Reading Time: 6 minutes

As with education in general, our ability to respond to COVID-19  in education depends significantly on access to resources by students and teachers. Even in this moment of crisis, governments should inform their decisions regarding education and educational resources on the available data whenever possible. However, we realise that accessing relevant data is not necessarily straightforward and this should not block other elements of system response-recovery-reform. 

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