Despite all challenges and tragedies, some dare to say that the future came earlier during 2020. This “future” is complex, it scares us when we realize that education inequality has increased even more when it was already unacceptable, and school closure set back successes achieved through hard years of effort and investment. However, this same future brings hope when we have witnessed how education stakeholders have moved innovation from the margins to the center of many education systems to overcome the challenges imposed by the lockdown and social isolation.
In the report “Beyond reopening schools: how education can emerge stronger than before Covid-19”, Emiliana Vegas and Rebecca Winthrop propose five actions to guide transformation of education systems:
- Leverage public schools, given their essential role in equalizing opportunity across dimensions within society;
- Emphasize the instructional core of teaching and learning;
- Deploy education technology to power up schools in a long-term manner and for the core benefits of teaching and learning;
- Forge stronger and more trusting relationships between parents and teachers;
- And implement an iterative approach of understanding the evidence and setting the course of change accordingly.
Regarding applying education technology, Emiliana stresses that “edtech alone is not a magic bullet, it can complement teaching and learning when it’s used in a smart way”. Her team argues for a simple use of edtech focused on the following main goals:
- scale up quality instruction (e.g. pre-recorded lessons),
- facilitate personalized learning (e.g. live 101 tutoring),
- expand opportunities to practice, even better when in authentic digital settings,
- increase learner engagement (e.g. through gamification).
Many challenges are ahead of us, being one of them the limited access to Internet connectivity in rural and poor areas around the world. In order to understand and approach these challenges, Eduix has worked intensively with our international partners. We will continue working hard next year to implement our best practices and lessons learned together with our current and future international partners who want to join our efforts in leveraging digital education ecosystems.
Meanwhile, we wish you all a great holiday season and a Happy New Year!
