IITE and partner resources

UNESCO IITE and its global partners from all over the world have developed and made available for educators, learners and their parents multiple resources for distance education to ensure continuity of learning, engagement and communication at the time of massive school closure.

 

 

Resources

 

  • Be an online tutor in 24 hours course provides necessary training to teaching and academic personnel of various levels about online education processes. It has several modules: Online Learning Technology Landscape, e-learning management tools, and communication and creation tools. The course is available in English, Arabic, Russian, Spanish and French.
  • Design an Online Course in 24 Hours focuses on developing online classroom and planning and designing online lessons in few steps by using modern and advanced educational tools. The course is available in both Arabic and English.

The new training courses are based on Hands-On and Learning by Doing approaches. You can access the courses and register easily through the following link: https://futureskills.hbmsu.ac.ae/

  • COL Virtual Event Environment has over 100 courses on a range of subjects in the areas of technology, vocational education and higher education.
  • OER for Open Schooling has grade 10-12 textbooks in various subjects.
  • Directory of Open Educational Resources has over 7000 resources on higher education, open schooling, teacher education, and technical and vocational skills development.
  • Open Resources for English Language Teaching is intended to support classroom activities for teachers.
  • COL’s Open Access Repository provides access to a large number of resources on online learning and guides to help teachers plan, design, develop and offer quality online learning.
  • Keeping the doors of learning open COVID-19 is a dedicated web page with a curated list of resources for policymakers, school and college administrators, teachers, parents and learners to assist with student learning during the closure of educational institutions.
  • MOOC on Blended Learning Practice (BLPMOOC4), which has been designed to assist teachers in adopting blended learning strategies through a step-by-step constructivist and design-based approach. The fourth edition of the MOOC starts on November 15, 2020.
  • Technology-Enabled Learning: Policy, Pedagogy and Practice
    This new resource aims to help policy makers and education leaders re-think existing models of education and training for the post-COVID-19 world. The book showcases some of the most successful examples of developing policy, improving pedagogy and supporting institutional practice. The key recommendation is to mainstream TEL to develop resilient education systems that can cope with sudden disasters.
  • Assistive Technologies: Inclusive Teaching Guidelines for Educators
    This guide describes how educators can use assistive technology to promote an inclusive environment that accommodates the different ways learners assimilate information and learn. It introduces them to a range of assistive technologies that address individual learners’ needs and help them overcome the barriers they face.
  • Inclusive Design for Learning: Creating Flexible and Adaptable Content with Learners
    This Knowledge Series paper introduces the dimensions of inclusive design as it applies to learning and focuses on the design of diverse learning experiences to help optimise learning opportunities for all learners.
  • MOOC: Mobile Learning with Multimedia
    The Mobile Learning with Multimedia course introduces participants to the use of technology tools that are readily available to them to develop curriculum-relevant and pedagogically sound educational podcasts that are broadcast ready and easily accessible in low connectivity settings. Start date is 23 November 2020.
  • MOOC: Cybersecurity Training for Teachers
    The Cybersecurity Training for Teachers (CTT) course is designed to provide teachers with the knowledge they need to protect themselves and their students online, as well as create awareness for the parents and carers. The course targets secondary and primary school teachers as well as teacher educators and will run over 4 weeks. Start date is 23 November 2020.
  • The Blue Economy: Blue Resources MOOC (25 January 2021 – 28 February 2021)
    The MOOC delivered through a partnership between COL and the University of Seychelles. The MOOC introduces key blue economy sectors that can be developed and explores some of the key considerations that influence the sustainability of individual sectors and blue economy strategies as a whole. This is an introductory course for persons from various backgrounds, both technical and non-technical.
  • COL Internship Programme
    Internship: up to 12 months, for young citizens of the Commonwealth countries, in support of learning for sustainable development. These internships will be available remotely, at COL headquarters located in Metro Vancouver, Canada or the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), New Delhi, India, or as a combination of both remote and on-site. For more information and to apply click here.
  • MOOC: Introduction to Social Media Marketing
    COL has developed a new MOOC for anyone interested in developing insights into the effective use of social media for marketing and communication purposes. The five-week course starts 8 March 2021 and will benefit teachers who want to build on their knowledge and practice in teaching and learning with technology. Register here.
  • A Guide for Implementing a Quality Assurance Institutional Review Tool for Blended Learning has been designed to support higher education institutions to review, or audit, their readiness to offer blended learning courses.
  • National ODL Policy and Practice in the Commonwealth:  this publication includes examples of policies which are currently available and could inform new policy development in countries where a policy framework currently does not exist or needs to be updated.
  • Out-of-School Children: a Contemporary View from the Pacific Island Countries of the Commonwealth:this study provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges facing the education systems in nine Pacific Island states as well as the strategies already in place to improve accessibility and engagement in education through open schooling. An integrated approach to open schooling can build a bridge between knowledge acquisition and skills development and has the potential to reduce inequalities and address the needs in most countries.
  • Quality and Equity in Digital Learning: the main purpose of this policy brief is to look at what policies are needed to maintain high-quality and equitable access to digital learning, especially in light of experience from responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper addresses technological, social and age factors influencing access to and uses of digital learning and makes several different policy recommendations for governments, institutions and teachers.
  • Colcommons.org: COL has launched  a brand-new platform with competency-based, professional development micro-courses. Complying with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the courses take a simple “tell and test” approach and use video and interactive quizzes to help learners study at their own pace and time.
    Currently, the platform hosts five courses. In addition to COL’s popular course on “Understanding Open Educational Resources,” it includes a new course on “Universal Design for Learning,” which will help institutions address the issue of designing accessible teaching and learning materials for persons with disabilities. The other short courses currently available are “Introduction to Microlearning,” “Learning Analytics: a Primer,” and “Computational Thinking for Teachers.”

Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University (SLIBNU) serves as an experimental platform comprising scientific research, technology development and education. SLIBNU focuses on researching learning patterns under ICT environments, designing smart learning environments and building platforms that enable life-long learning and support the various, personalized and differentiated learning styles of digital learners. Therefore, the Institute offers:

  • Online multi-Language series (in Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, English, German, French) to help people protect themselves from the Coronavirus.
  • Learning resources for schools during COVID-19 outbreak to support undisrupted learning.

Online portal LendED specifically created for the COVID-19 crisis provides schools and teachers worldwide with access to over 200 free educational resources from our suppliers.

  • Coursera Coronavirus Response Initiative
    Coursera provides every university in the world impacted by COVID-19 with free access to our course catalogue through Coursera for Campus. Universities can sign up to provide their enrolled students with access to more than 3,800 courses and 400 Specializations from Coursera’s university and industry partners. More information is available at Coursera blog.
  • Digital article “Higher Ed Needs a Long-Term Plan for Virtual Learning” in Harvard Business Review on how to move beyond the immediate response to COVID-19.
  • Resources for online learning
    Handling a wide range of conversations involving coronavirus (COVID-19) and​ overall health concerns in your schools and communities can be difficult,​ especially when trying to parse fact from fiction. If you’re looking for reliable​ content to share with your members on the prevention of coronavirus, or​ dealing with anxiety surrounding the virus, we’ve compiled some helpful​ information from leading health authorities. We have also included​ information about tools you can use to continue building a connected​ learning community.
  • Workplace from Facebook​
    The government of Gujarat, India keeps more than ​115,000 educators in their​ state informed​ with no fuss tools while they’re working remotely. Now we’re​ making Workplace Advanced free for emergency services and government​ organizations globally for 12 months.
  • Facebook Live
    Be part of what’s happening around the world in real-time, no matter where you are.
  • Get Digital
    Get Digital gives schools, families and young people the tools, resources and support they need to create safe, healthy and supportive digital communities. The platform provides with lesson plans, conversation starters, activities, videos and other resources to help young people become empowered in a digital world.

Teach from Home
A temporary hub of information and tools to help teachers during the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis: how to teach remotely with and without video calls, how to make lessons accessible to all, how to keep students engaged, how to keep in touch with other teachers and more additional support and inspiration.

Institute of Education in collaboration with the World Bank has launched Education & Development amid & post COVID: World Bank / HSE Seminar Series for experts to share research findings, ideas, and practices about how education systems can respond to various challenges stemming from the COVID-2019 crisis. While addressing different topics, all webinar sessions include a discussion on implications for policy makers and practitioners.

Institute of Education is developing analytics and practical tips for organizing education, to take into account mistakes and find growth points: tools, solutions, models, and methodologies for all levels of education. Goal is to prevent the rise in inequality and to mitigate the impact on the future success of schoolchildren and students:

  • Talent Online
    There are about 110 technical courses available, free of charge for all users.
  • Huawei ICT academy
    Huawei ICT Academy is a partnership between Huawei and Academies around the world. The academy authorizes universities/colleges to deliver some of certification courses to their students. Huawei provides training to teachers of universities and certify them. No charges to university for all these activities apply.

International Institute of Online Education (IIOE)
IIOE is a robust platform that allows teachers to gain most in-demand comprehensive skills, access quality cutting-edge courses and pragmatic web tools, witness self-improvement through the ICT-competency assessment, participate in project-based online and gain on-site training opportunities, co-create local digital learning resources database and much more.

  • LearningKeepsGoing.org
    Coronavirus is posing unprecedented challenges to schools, colleges and universities around the globe. To help you keep the learning going, a coalition of education organizations has curated free tools, strategies, tips and best practices for teaching online.
  • Coronavirus Response Community
    In this community, educators are coming together to help meet those challenges. Ask questions, get advice, and learn what other educators are doing around the world.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) today launched its new 2020 Guidelines on Child Online Protection (COP), a comprehensive set of recommendations for children, parents and educators, industry and policymakers on how to contribute to the development of a safe and empowering online environment for children and young people.

  • Mail.ru Group has introduced  a set of measures to help schools and universities quickly switch to distance learning. For distance learning, free features of VKontakte and Odnoklassniki social networks are recommended: communities, chats, life streaming and apps.
  • Mail.ru Group for Education communities at VKontakte and Odnoklassniki provide daily updates about services for distance learning: detailed instructions, lifehacks and video lessons.
  • GeekBrains educational portal provides universities with temporal free access to its online learning management system and will open access to courses on programming, design, management and marketing.
  • Skillbox online university has opened access to its applied courses.
  • Algoritmika coding school for children has opened access to its distance learning system. Computer science and coding courses are designed for primary and secondary school students.

Physical/personal distancing narratives during Covid 19 era: A National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) initiative

Digital storytelling tools and methodology through a process of sharing lived experiences in a story circle that results in a 2-4 -minute digital story, blending personal narratives with multimedia content. The playlist presented here includes 5 examples of digital stories on the theme “physical/personal distancing”. The key idea is to showcase views and perspectives of how internal and external boundaries transform people’s lives stressing in parallel the role of digital tools and technologies as self-expression and community building “enablers” in public health crisis.

Curators

Michael Meimaris – Professor Emeritus of New Technologies in Media, Communication and Education, Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

Evika Karamagioli – PhD, Scientific Associate, Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

Effie Giannou – MSc, PhD(c), Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

This information is kindly provided by Prof M.Meimaris, Member of the IITE Governing Board and his team who have been working for more than 12 consecutive years in the field of digital storytelling (DST). More than 800 stories have been produced, all empowering their creators from 5 years to 85 years old and documenting their experiences and feelings regarding personal and societal matters. This experience has been presented and discussed at two international conferences on DST have been organized in Greece – Athens (2014) and Zakynthos (2018).

The stories

Eyes by Konstantina Marathaki

Indoors by Kelly Tsagaki Rekleitou

No Isolation by Marieta Aikaterini Symiakou

Social Distancing by Fanouria Papaioanou

Social Distancing by Lambrini Karadima

!aCROSS by Dimitra Vourloumi

Nisai Group is a collective of educational organisations that work towards the common goal of making education accessible to all.

The offer to an educational organizations comes in two forms:

  • Free Webinars covering topics to support and share best practice to teachers across the globe. As online learning is becoming increasingly important for students to access education, the Nisai Virtual Academy has developed a range of online teacher training courses to accommodate the new demands on teachers’ skills.
  • The second offer is for the English online offer ‘Units of Sound’. Nisai Group are looking to offer, free of charge, 5 licences per school for a period of 3 months.  Units of Sound is a literacy intervention tool, which can be purchased by schools and individuals.

More information on the offer and proposal during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Odnoklassniki social media network has prepared a detailed instruction how to use its services for distance learning. We are teachers! community hosts a call center for video calls within OK. This service will allow all teachers to get advice on distance learning in social networks.

  • The Open University of China is offering hundreds of thousands of open education resources to learners in and out of China. There are different categories of resources covering the areas of epidemic prevention and control, educational resources at higher and vocational education level, short courses for social lifelong learners, resources for learners from kindergarten to middle school, and videos by scientists.
  • The Open University of China has launched a website called “Duoyutong” (Multilanguage learning website), which supplies English, Spanish, French, Russian, Portuguese, German, Japanese and Korean courses.
  • The university offers special courses that provide advice on COVID-19 prevention and tips how to maintain mental health during the crisis; they also contain information about Chinese culture, as well as facts about nature and science.
  • The university also offers an extensive number of lectures with English subtitles, which cover highly relevant topics such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, machine learning, scientific and technological innovation, resources brought by space, ecological challenges’ courses and more scientific and enlightening lectures to be added soon.

Rybakov Foundation supported partnership projects:

  • Special Project “School 2035”
    “School 2035” is a free platform for school studying. It allows creating lessons online, teaching remotely groups of students, homework checking, getting acquainted with blended and project learning, getting to know about game mechanics for student’s involvement. The project is carried out by the Rybakov Foundation’s impact partner – Core with a support of the Foundation.
  • Guide: “Geeks to the rescue”
    Arina, Masha and Nastya from Geek Teachers gathered huge database of online resources: teachers’ blogs, advice and tools for distant learning, a collection of cool sources in various knowledge spheres, apps for personal effectiveness and even the translation of Berlin Opera. Everyone who wants may join to fill it!
  • Rybakov Foundation organizes distant learning for 500 children from multi-child families during coronavirus
    On April 20, Ekaterina Rybakova, the President of the Rybakov Foundation, announced the new program that aims to support multi-child families by providing kids with laptops. The program initiators are the Rybakov Foundation, the regional non-governmental organization “Mnogodetstvo”, the Center for Assistance to multi-child Families “MnogoMama” and the charity foundation “Volunteers to help orphans”. 500 children from multi-child families will receive 500 computers to continue learning from homes. Wildberries company will arrange the notebooks delivery.
  • Shanghai Open University international exchange learning network (available in English)
  • Shanghai Learning Network (available in Chinese)
    Shanghai learning net provides comprehensive and personalized learning cloud services, such as online learning, activity sharing, schoolmate communication, map service, intelligent online search, lifelong learning files and credit certification, to the middle and senior citizens, parents of primary and middle school students, workers and migrant workers.
  • Shanghai Educational Resources Center (available in Chinese)
    Shanghai educational resource center covers more than 65,000 high-quality educational resources, including video, books, texts, online courses, multimedia courseware, and other forms. The resource center adopts the virtuous cycle mode of «converge-management-shared-optimization» to provide all kinds of educational institutions and learning platforms with needed resource sharing and application services.
  • Shanghai Open University online learning platform (available in Chinese)
    Students of Shanghai Open University can log on to the learning platform of Shanghai Open University to study online courses, do homework, and answer questions with teachers.
  • Traditional Chinese culture (available in English)
    This course is a brief introduction to Confucius and Confucianism, Chinese painting, literature, opera, medicine, Four Great Inventions of Ancient China and other traditional Chinese culture.
  • Folklore with Chinese characteristics (available in Chinese)
    Chinese folk customs, as an essential part of the culture, have been well inherited and carried forward—the unique characteristics of Chinese folk customs reflected in those indigenous traditional Chinese festivals.
  • Chinese classical dance (available in Chinese)
    Through the study of this course, students can both physically and mentally prepare in the dance performance, and the harmony and unity of strength and rhythm can make the whole dance have a sense of rhythm.

Throughout this special time of need, TAL would like to provide technical support, and offer free applications to support teachers and students stay connected, continuing both teaching and learning.

  • CodeMonkey
    CodeMonkey is a leading online coding curriculum for K-8th Grade. With gamified coding courses, students learn the fundamentals of computer programming as they solve puzzles and build games in real coding languages such as Python.
  • Dr. Panda
    Dr. Panda, part of TAL Education Group (NYSE: TAL), is a children’s brand for education and entertainment, mainly producing kids’ games, education software and TV Animations for a global audience.
  • FirstLeap English
    First Leap English is a high-end quality education brand, focusing on providing international English training services for children aged 2-15 years old, currently covering 70 cities nationwide. First Leap English utilizes AI education technology to effectively drive online and offline complete learning, to provide children with 24/7 English immersion solutions.

More details about the resources

Literacy is the foundation of all learning — but unfortunately many children around the world lack the resources they need to develop basic literacy skills. Terawe support literacy efforts across the globe by providing free tools to create ebooks in multiple languages. Teachers and students can use their time off school due to the COVID-19 crisis to write, illustrate and publish ebooks for children just like them in disadvantaged communities.

More about the Chekhov Story Author

UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) believes that facilitating the continuity of education for all through remote learning with a particular focus on the most vulnerable and disadvantaged is key during the current pandemic. UIL is sharing expertise and enabling structured exchange through:

  • A webinar series among over 170 cities around the globe to ensure that learning does not stop during the COVID-19 pandemic for the millions of students living in urban areas.
  • Video interviews with UNESCO learning cities representatives, UIL features education strategies and practices responding to COVID-19.
  • Blog by publishing expertise and opinion pieces on topics such as adult education and family learning.
  • Family learning resources helps promote family literacy and learning by compiling and disseminating examples of good practice and research.
  • A call for abstracts for a special issue of our journal, the International Review of Education – Journal of Lifelong Learning, on ‘Education in the age of COVID-19’.

The Virtual University of the State of São Paulo (UNIVESP) is a public university in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, designed to offer distance learning courses. It has opened the content of nearly 300 undergraduate courses (disciplines) to support professors and students from other universities around the world. It also has made available more than 8000 video lectures through its YouTube channel. All the courses and content are in Portuguese language.

VK has prepared a detailed guide for using VK tools for distance education. These tools include communities, chats, videos and live steams. The guide includes recommendations for schools and universities, as well as teachers and instructors how to shift to distance learning, bring learners together for communication, share learning materials and organize webinars through life streaming at VK from desktops and mobile devices.

WeLMS is a Learning Management System which supports formal and informal learning in both public and private sectors. Available in English, French, and Russian versions, it is applicable for full spectrum of levels of education, including K12, Higher Ed and Vocational Training.  The main functions include teaching content production and organization, daily activities management of teachers and students, course arrangement, live broadcast, data statistics and other functions.

More information about Weidong Cloud Education on COVID-19 education response.

XuetangX was initiated by Tsinghua University on Oct 10th,2013, and is the first MOOCs platform in China to integrate and share global high-quality MOOCs . XuetangX has already delivered 3,217 online courses together from first-class universities all over the world, including Tsinghua, PKU, MIT and UC Berkeley, among others. The platform has attracted over 59.2 million learners, with the total course enrollment number up to 166 million.

  • Yandex launched a free online school that operates full-time. For learners from grade 5 to 11 Yandex.School provides video lessons on more than 15 subjects of the school curriculum, varying from physics to history of world art. These lessons are streamed at Yandex.Efir. Yandex.School also conducts popular science talks, lessons on geometry, and classes to help learners get prepared for unified state examination and basic state examination. These talks and video lessons are streamed at Yandex.Efir and posted at Yandex.Tutor service.
  • Yandex.School offers to teachers a video platform for conducting lessons with their students – it is part of a larger Education.Yandex service. In addition, Education.Yandex hosts more than 50 thousand tasks on three subjects: Russian, mathematics and biology. Yandex.Teacher offers webinars to help teachers organize distance learning.
  • YandexPracticum (available in English) and YandexAcademy provide access to online courses for beginner IT-specialists and other opportunities to master coding, analytics and testing skills.

Zoom has temporarily lifted the 40 minute time limit for free/basic users by request, in 20+ countries around the world for K-12 schools impacted by the Coronavirus to help enable teachers to continue teaching virtually. Request to have the limit lifted for your school here.

100E fighting COVID-19
100E helps every K12 school as well as university around the world fighting COVID-19 with free access to its distance learning tools based on 100E’s «Cloud Group Broadcasting» technology.

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