World Bank EduTech Podcast

Opportunities to read and learn at home are critical to improving children’s learning outcomes, but too many young children are growing up without books and opportunities to read at home. Expanding opportunities to Read@Home is essential during this crisis, but is a smart investment at any time.

Today, World Bank EdTech team member Maria Barron speaks with World Bank Read@Home team members Penelope Bender and Jennie Albone about the importance of children having access to physical books and learning materials and how this complements remote learning and EdTech approaches which are being rolled out by governments. In particular, they speak about how Read@Home is deploying technology to test and scale ‘track and trace’ systems to enable efficient book procurement and how Read@Home is contributing to open-source digital libraries to ensure suitable books are available in languages children understand. Learn more about Read@Home at https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/education/brief/read-at-home.

Related Reading Recommendation:

Raising Kids Who Read: What Parents and Teachers Can Do: 9781118769720: Willingham, Daniel T.: Books

Recommended Reading from our Guests:

Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd-Me3EBGYY&t=221s)

The High House by Jessie Greengrass (goodreads.com)

Today, World Bank Senior Education and Technology Specialist Cristobal Cobo is speaking with Maryam Akmal (Young Professional, Education Global Practice) and Alberto Munoz Najar (Consultant, Education Global Practice) about twin reports developed by the World Bank: “Remote Learning During the Global School Lockdown: Multi-Country Lessons” (https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/36141) and “Lessons From Remote Learning During COVID-19: Principles for today and tomorrow" (forthcoming). These reports were developed at different times during the pandemic and offer a complementary perspective of a complex and still evolving phenomena. The first one follows a qualitative research approach with the motivation to understand the perceptions of education experts regarding the effectiveness of remote and remedial learning programs implemented across 17 countries. The second one uses mixed-methods to analyze how countries implemented different remote learning strategies, whether or not these strategies were taken-up and assesses what available evidence suggests about the effectiveness of remote learning during COVID-19. These reports were developed between April 2020 and October 2021.

Today, our EdTech team members Robert Hawkins and Dean Kline are speaking with Finland's Helsinki Education Hub and Turkey's EdTech Innovation Hub ETKİM about building edtech innovation hubs and the World Bank's newly created EdTech Innovation Hub Community of Practice.

Mia-Stiina Heikkala, Lead Advisor, EdTech Start-Ups & Project Lead for Helsinki Education Hub, joins us to speak about the Helsinki Education Hub and how it brings education and the learning ecosystem actors together in Finland and globally. Finland has been at the forefront for many years and this initiative aims is to improve education and learning start ups' product development, innovations, and productivity to generate and implement new innovations. https://www.hel.fi/uutiset/en/kaupunginkanslia/the-new-helsinki-education-hub-turns-learning-and-education-ideas-into-innovations?pd=v

Mustafa Hakan Bucuk joins us from Turkey's Ministry of Education to speak about Turkey's EdTech Incubation and Innovation Hub-ETKİM and its importance as part of the Safe Schooling and Distance Education project being implemented by Turkey's Ministry of National Education and the World Bank. The EdTech Innovation Hub, as a part of ETKİM, will be the main center of innovation, collaboration, clustering, research, development, and networking endeavors for the EdTech sector and all stakeholders to support content development, training, and blended digital classroom. https://yegitek.meb.gov.tr/meb_iys_dosyalar/2021_04/01104348_SSDEP_Feasibility_Study_TermsofReference.pdf

On July 21, the World Bank, UNICEF, and EdTech Hub co-hosted a side event of the Global Education Summit: Financing GPE 2021-2025. The event featured an overview of the Reimagine Education: Digital Tools for Learning for Every Child Everywhere partnership, including UNICEF and World Bank joint ambitions to reach children with high-quality digital learning. It also included government perspectives on national EdTech priorities, and partner reflections.

Vicky Collis, EdTech Hub Interim Managing Director, moderated the event, which featured the following speakers:

·  Robert Jenkins, Global Director of Education for UNICEF

·  Jaime Saavedra, Global Director of Education at the World Bank

·  Emmanuel Allie, GPE Coordinator at the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, Sierra Leone

·  Prof. Carolyne Nombo, Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Tanzania

·  Chris McBurnie, Country Lead for Sierra Leone, EdTech Hub

·  Martin Seychell, Deputy Director General, Directorate-General for International Partnerships, European Commission

·  Paula Malan, Senior Education Adviser, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Finland

We are facing challenging times. The pandemic has not only disrupted education globally, but has also exacerbated preexisting inequalities. On the other hand, COVID has also been time for experimentation and innovation. Today, our World Bank EdTech team member Senior Education Technology Specialist Cristobal Cobo is speaking with World Bank colleagues Senior Education Specialist Karthika Radhakrishnan-Nair, Education Specialist Diego Armando Luna Bazaldua, and Consultant Aishwarya Khurana about assessments, how assessments have been adapted to the remote education settings, and lessons can we learn from these experiences for education after the pandemic.

During the episode, our guests recommend reading materials on the topic:

Remote Learning : Evidence from Nepal during COVID-19: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/36031

Practical lessons for phone-based assessments of learning https://gh.bmj.com/content/bmjgh/5/7/e003030.full.pdf

Assessing outside of the “classroom box” while schools are closed: The potential of phone-based formative assessments to support learning continuity https://blogs.worldbank.org/education/assessing-outside-classroom-box-while-schools-are-closed-potential-phone-based-formative

Guide on how to create learning content in 160 characters (SMS): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KAPEfOLASE6qxwsIL-7oTlpL7mTv0J6Q/view

The World Bank Education COVID-19 Response Team has been monitoring the status of a school closures and remote learning modalities since the beginning of the pandemic and joined forces with Johns Hopkins University and UNICEF to launch a COVID-19 Global Education Recovery Tracker in March of this year. The purpose of the tracker is to capture ongoing information about the global status of schools, teachers, and students amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This information is intended to be of use for education and public health policy stakeholders and researchers from around the world. In this second year of the pandemic, and as many countries are starting to move from emergency responses towards policies aimed for recovery, the tracker aims to support this process by focusing on data that can help build back better and more resilient education systems. Learn more about the tracker at https://www.covideducationrecovery.global.

Today, World Bank EdTech team member Maria Barron speaks with World Bank Senior Operations Officer Kaliope Azzi-Huck and World Bank Senior Education Specialist Tigran Shmis who lead this effort alongside their colleagues Melissa Adelman, Joao Pedro Azevedo, and Maria Barron.

Our World Bank EdTech team has been actively working with Ministries of Education and multilateral organizations to provide guidance and technical assistance to maximize countries’ effectiveness in the design and execution of remote learning strategies. Between May and November 2020, we conducted an exploratory study to understand the perceived effectiveness of remote learning solutions implemented across five countries: Brazil, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Peru. Then, building on key lessons learned, we identified global trends in remote learning implemented during school closures and the actions governments are taking to get ready for remedial learning in 13 countries: Afghanistan, Cambodia, Cameroon, Haiti, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nepal, Niger, Pakistan, Rwanda, Estonia, and Uruguay. We wrote a series of blog posts about key lessons learned from these experiences (available in English, Spanish and French):

Today, we are speaking with EdTech team members about the study: Senior Education Specialist Cristobal Cobo, Research Analyst Maria Barron, Analyst Inaki Sanchez, and Consultant Alberto Munoz Najar.

At the beginning of 2021, the World Bank EdTech Team identified as one of the main topics of interest for Ministries of Education worldwide the need to mitigate learning losses caused by the ongoing pandemic and the use of technology as a pathway to accelerate learning. One technology that has been a focus for these remedial actions is Adaptive Learning, also called Personalized Adaptive Learning (PAL). Today's episode focuses on adaptive learning and its application in countries such as Dominican Republic and Ecuador. World Bank Research Analyst Maria Barron (https://blogs.worldbank.org/team/maria-barron) speaks with World Bank Senior Education Specialist Cristobal Cobo (https://blogs.worldbank.org/team/cristobal-cobo) about the promise of adaptive learning, World Bank Senior Economist Diego Angel-Urdinola (https://blogs.worldbank.org/team/diego-angel-urdinola) about lessons in adaptive learning from Ecuador, World Bank Economist Juan Baron (https://blogs.worldbank.org/team/juan-baron) about lessons in adaptive learning from the Dominican Republic.

Related blog posts:

https://blogs.worldbank.org/education/use-adaptive-computer-assisted-remediation-programs-prevent-student-dropout-context-covid

https://blogs.worldbank.org/education/adaptive-technology-help-improve-math-learning-dominican-republic

https://blogs.worldbank.org/education/considering-adaptive-learning-system-roadmap-policymakers

Today, World Bank Senior Education Technology Specialist Alex Twinomugisha is speaking with Agatha Gikunda, Robert Fogel, and Frederico Carvalho about digital infrastructure in education - how people think about infrastructure like education management information systems, cloud, and devices, common mistakes, and questions people don't ask.

World Bank Education Specialist Ekua Bentil speaks about leveraging blockchain in education, specifically within the Africa Centers of Excellence Project, with project partners Yaz El Hakim (VerifyEd), Saleh Iliyasu Maitala (IBM), and Jerry Kponyo (KNUST).

The Africa Higher Education Centers of Excellence (ACE) Project is a World Bank initiative in collaboration with governments of participating countries to support Higher Education institutions in specializing in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), Environment, Agriculture, applied Social Science / Education and Health. It is the first World Bank project aimed at the capacity building of higher education institutions in Africa. Learn more at https://ace.aau.org.