And one day, suddenly, everything stopped. And, as Gabriel García Marquez would say in his novel, perhaps “It was inevitable”. When we wrote The future is now a few months ago and we were talking about disruptions in the global order, we never thought that they would come with such virulence and, even less, that the trigger would be a virus that will force us all to stop what … [Read more...] about #skills21 in the context of COVID-19
Infrastructure and educational technology
School closures: the challenge that COVID-19 has imposed on the educational systems of Latin America and the Caribbean
Rosita looks through the window of her house in Guayaquil and remembers her school, her teacher, and her classmates. She does not understand why she can no longer go out to play with her friends in the neighborhood or visit her grandmother, nor why her father has not come to visit her in almost a month. Her mother has told her she needs to study and do homework following … [Read more...] about School closures: the challenge that COVID-19 has imposed on the educational systems of Latin America and the Caribbean
Schools and coronavirus – three urgent challenges and one necessary transformation
The current spread of coronavirus poses a major public health challenge to every country in the world. Schools and their administrators may be the next in line to face the test, as these institutions have traditionally been a key channel of contagion of all sorts of illnesses. Let’s take a look at the case of China—when the virus became endemic, school authorities postponed … [Read more...] about Schools and coronavirus – three urgent challenges and one necessary transformation
How to achieve inclusive education in Latin America and the Caribbean
The promise of inclusive education in Latin America and the Caribbean is still far from achieved, especially for the thousands of children and youth with some disability in the region. The probability of attending school for children between 6 to 11 years with disabilities is 8 percentage points lower compared to children without disabilities. And in high school, this gap only … [Read more...] about How to achieve inclusive education in Latin America and the Caribbean
Teachers and books for the rich, robots and screens for the poor?
When we talk about technology for education we think of tablets, laptops, robots or interactive platforms with which children learn new (coding) or traditional skills (mathematics) better or faster. Raised like this, it seems inevitable to imagine that students or higher income schools have the most access to this type of resources. But, what would happen if access to … [Read more...] about Teachers and books for the rich, robots and screens for the poor?