EdTech at Save Children since the COVID-19 pandemic: Practice and Evidence from across the movement

• In Event: Transforming Education Through Technology: Save the Children's Growing Portfolio of EdTech Programming and Evidence of Impact

Proposal

Save the Children utilizes a range of Education technology modalities in countries across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East to improve access to quality education for underserved children. These work to provide improved learning experiences for children, support teacher professional development and instruction, and improve education information management systems. Our Edtech portfolio has grown in response to and in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic through increased in-house development and strategic partnerships with education technology vendors. This allowed us to respond to the challenges the pandemic posed for our education programs, and support more marginalized children to experience to thrive in their educational journeys.

This presentation highlights our overarching strategy for Edtech and demonstrates how we make smart investments and partner strategically to enable innovative, equitable, and cost-effective development and deployment of education technology that has impacts on the lives of underserved children. It showcases our portfolio of programs and the range of evidence available of their impact.

To support student learning in low resource and emergency settings, we develop our own education platforms and adapt and deploy existing technology platforms to ensure they are tailored to the needs of the children we serve. Learning Tree is a flagship learning application developed in-house by Save the Children, which has been rolled out to girls with limited access to education in Pakistan and children on the move in Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico. We have partnered with leading technology companies to adapt and deploy personalized learning apps, such as onebillion's onecourse in Sierra Leone, EIDU’s learning platform in Kenya, War Child Holland’s Can't Wait to Learn in Ukraine, Library for All’s Elevate in Ethiopia and Myanmar. We also deploy low-cost technologies such as Interactive Radio Instruction in Malawi and Rwanda. Our evidence shows that these programs improve gender inclusivity, student engagement, and student learning outcomes in numeracy, literacy and social emotional learning.

To support teachers and school administrators respond better to student needs, we have a range of projects that improve teacher professional development and instruction, and education management information systems. These includes Interactive Voice Response (IVR) materials for teacher training in Uganda and Sierra Leone, Learning Management Systems in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger and Uganda, and teacher peer-learning platforms utilizing Whatsapp and Workplace in Somalia, Lebanon, Nepal and Myanmar. Waliku is Save the Children’s internally-developed education information management system platform (EMS). Originally designed in Indonesia to help track and respond to student absenteeism, it has now been expanded to a more generalized EMS system that supports education projects in Malawi, the Philippines and Nigeria by monitoring a myriad health, personal and social factors that constrain or support children’s learning and wellbeing. Our evidence shows that these programs improve teacher knowledge and practice and reduce student absenteeism and dropout.

Author

• Sara Renee Cohen, Save the Children US