Online Education and Lessons Learned from COVID-19

With schools starting reopening locally or nationwide in many countries, it’s important to not neglect the lessons learned during lockdowns.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted inequalities and emergencies in the global education systems. Marginalized groups, children living in poverty or conflictual areas, girls, refugees, migrant children, kids, and youth with special needs were already facing barriers to access a proper education. Educational systems are disrupted every year in various countries due to climate change, natural disasters, or wars. The pandemic added a new barrier to school attendance in those countries.

Now, there is a great risk that a major number of children and youth will never return to school when lockdowns are over. Hence, the progress towards increasing the impact of education on improving health, wellbeing, economies, and climate action will take a few steps backward.
On the other hand, the lack of financial resources might expose children to the risk of abuse, family violence, child labor, early marriage, and trafficking.

In many countries, online learning was the leading way to keep up with classes, yet it was not a 100 percent inclusive solution. There are families all over the world, even in developed countries, that don’t have access to household computers or online resources. The gap was wider in specific areas such as sub-Saharan Africa, where 89 percent of learners had no internet access.
Governments and public authorities in these countries might be focused on addressing the health crisis, yet it is crucial to assure the continuity of learning.
Therefore, teachers, innovators, non-governmental organizations, parents, and anyone involved in providing education should be supported. Education can continue through a variety of alternative ways including both high-tech and low-tech solutions.

Categories of children and students most at risk must be a top priority of teachers and educators. You as a citizen or innovator can become involved to help that kids retain knowledge and skills, to make them come back to the classroom when schools reopen, and to build strategies to sustain and manage future crises.
You can cooperate with schools to reduce the risk of school drop-outs when schools open by working with local communities and families with children at risk of dropping out. You can help identify children that had no access to online learning and make it possible that they recuperate the missing lessons.

A considerable number of contestants in the Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition are focused on ideas and projects that contribute towards achieving SDG 4 on Quality education. Even though all goals and their specific target are highly important if SDG 4 is achieved it will have a major impact on the progress of all the other SDGs.
If you are interested in supporting Quality Education or the other SDGs through innovative and sustainable solutions, you can join the Entrepreneurship Campus, gain knowledge and skills from our online entrepreneurial training and search for likeminded people from your region or other countries.
If you’re feeling tempted to get started into social entrepreneurship and become a changemaker, join the Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition by submitting an idea or project.

Children with disabilities and online education

Although the crisis came out of the blue, official authorities must be prepared and have inclusive emergency responses in place. The transition from the classroom to home was sudden, but even more abrupt was the transition from parent to teacher-parent.
In many cases, teachers were not able to support and engage children and students with disabilities with the help of tech solutions.
If there’s one thing that parents, students, and teachers agree on online learning is that it can be exhausting. Online learning has reminded us that powerful learning can only happen when we are engaged, energetic, and focused.
Now, imagine, how difficult it must be for special education teachers to keep their students engaged while using online tools.

Another challenge for those teachers was to coach parents and caregivers on how to implement tactics that work with each of their students. This list of ten resources for special education teachers can be helpful for parents and caregivers.
Online learning is a powerful tool, but better approaches are needed to exploit its full potential and make it more inclusive.