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The world has been moving learning to digital portals for decades. The coronavirus just turned it into a sprint.

Sobhi Tawil and Mark West - 28 February 2020

Tawil West Ideas Lab

With limited preparation, the world’s largest ever experiment in online and distance learning is underway.

Japan just joined a growing list of countries that have closed schools indefinitely and are scrambling to preserve the continuity of learning via (non-virus transmitting) wires and networks. Pundits have often said nationwide digital learning is inevitable, but few predicted it would be triggered by a health emergency.

We are about to witness what works and—gulp—does not work in terms of bringing education to students remotely at a pace and scale that has never before been seriously contemplated, let alone attempted in practice. Earlier this month in China, 200 million students began a new semester not by trudging backpacks to desks in classrooms, but by switching on digital screens at home. The Washington Post reported that the strain on bandwidth was so severe in some parts of the country that the internet slowed to a halt.

Those of us in international education community (and the edu-tech community, in particular) would do well to pay close attention. The models and processes to provision education in countries that have shuttered schools will differ considerably. Early evidence suggests that many districts and individual schools are rolling-out their own (boutique? haphazard?) solutions in the absence of national or state guidelines. The varied approaches attempted in places as diverse as Bahrain, China, Hong Kong, Iran, Italy, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea will illuminate what happens when formal education moves abruptly from brick and motor buildings to the cloud.

This is a moment to, first, help governments manage an effective transition and, second, draw lessons from it. The experiences and data collected over the next several weeks (if not months) will contribute to our understanding of how to provision distance learning that is accessible to and effective for large numbers of learners and in a hurry.

Keep your notebooks handy. This is an edu-tech experiment of unprecedented size.

 

Cite this article (APA format)
Tawil, S. and West, M. (28 Feburary 2020). The world has been moving learning to digital portals for decades. The coronavirus just turned it into a sprint. UNESCO Futures of Education Ideas LAB.  Retrieved from https://en.unesco.org/futuresofeducation/ideas-lab/ideas-lab/moving-learning-digital-portals.

Cite this article (MLA format)
Tawil, Sobhi and West, Mark. "The world has been moving learning to digital portals for decades. The coronavirus just turned it into a sprint." UNESCO Futures of Education Ideas LAB. 28 February 2020, https://en.unesco.org/futuresofeducation/ideas-lab/moving-learning-digital-portals.

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