As COVID19 outbreaks continue to disrupt learning worldwide, school leaders understand as never before the vital importance of transitioning to online learning quickly and effectively. No one has time to languish for months in “death by PowerPoint” meetings, staring at confusing graphics and listening to a presenter reading slides aloud.
The need to swiftly establish online learning is particularly acute in underserved areas, whether it’s socioeconomically disadvantaged school districts in North America and Europe or remote areas in Africa and the Middle East.
About 15 percent of U.S. households with school-age children have no high-speed internet connection at home, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. [1]
An even greater percentage — 35 percent — of U.S. households with children ages 6 to 17 and a yearly income below $30,000 have no high-speed internet connection at home, compared with 6 percent of such households with yearly incomes of $75,000 or more, the Pew Research analysis shows. [2] Of the households with yearly incomes lower than $30,000 and with children ages 6 to 17, roughly four in 10 (41 percent) with no high-speed internet connection are Black, and 38 percent are Hispanic. [3]
In 2019, 90 percent of European Union households had internet access, [4] according to Statista data. The top 10 countries in terms of internet speeds are, in order, Taiwan, Singapore, Jersey (the largest of the Channel Islands), Sweden, Denmark, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland and Norway,[5] according to CEO magazine research.
Yet at least one-third of the world’s schoolchildren – 463 million children globally – are unable to access remote learning because COVID-19 shuttered their schools, according to a UNICEF report released in August. [6] The report found that schoolchildren in sub-Saharan Africa are the most affected, with at least half of all students there unable to access remote learning. Globally, 72 percent of schoolchildren unable to access remote learning live in their countries’ poorest households. In upper-middle-income countries, schoolchildren from the poorest households account for up to 86 percent of students unable to access remote learning, the UNICEF report revealed. [7]
By the end of 2017 in the Middle East, the armed conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen brought back the number of regional out-of-school children to its 2007 level of over 14.3 million, UNICEF reports. [8] More than 8,850 education facilities in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya have been attacked and destroyed, leaving them incapable of hosting students for education purposes, according to the UNICEF data.
A related and dire situation is a lack of schools. UNICEF’s research shows roughly one in five school-aged children are not in school at all. [9] Poverty remains one of the most obstinate barriers, with children from the poorest households almost five times more likely to be out of primary school than those from the richest, UNICEF says. Children with disabilities and from ethnic minorities are also more likely to be left behind, according to UNICEF data. [10] Location also keeps children from school, UNICEF says. Children from rural areas are more than twice as likely to be out of primary school than their urban peers, and in conflict zones, 27 million children are out of school, according to UNICEF. [11]
HOW COUNTRIES CAN EFFICIENTLY BRIDGE STUDENTS’ DIGITAL DIVIDES
A way of setting up virtual schools with a strong, easy-to-operate digital backbone is essential to meet the world’s educational needs. Waiting to build infrastructure is expensive and too slow to avert the disaster that befalls the uneducated child. Best practices are:
Branded
Relevant
Scalable
Secure
Single platform, and
Modern and sophisticated code architecture that can grow with changing needs.
HOW AMESITE CAN HELP LAUNCH RELEVANT, ENGAGING PROGRAMS QUICKLY
Amesite, Inc., offers the ability to launch courses and programs in 24 hours. Its low operating costs, content customization and ease of use ensure that instructors have access to the best technology with less administrative work. The solution accommodates any curriculum and scales to meet demand.
Amesite has the assets to deliver these essential underpinnings so school districts and educational institutions can quickly bring outstanding teaching methods in a secure, deeper, brand-aware, hyper-personalized and technologically savvy way. That’s because Amesite uses artificial intelligence technologies to provide customized environments, up-to-the-minute, curated content, and easy-to-manage interfaces for instructors and students and learners.
The best part? Speed and efficiency in delivering the solution, branded to any organization. Amesite’s clients don’t need to hire staff to administer IT, or to build infrastructure. Amesite’s solutions are ready and scalable, out-of-the-box, delivered securely over the cloud. Amesite builds solutions for learning that work for everyone – teachers, learners, and families.
