World Bank EduTech Podcast

This week, World Bank Education Specialist Ekua Bentil speaks with Clara Njeru and Esther Nyauncho in Nairobi about their experiences as women in edtech in Africa. Clara and Esther are both part of the World Bank's African Women in EdTech (AWE) project to contribute broadly to women’s leadership initiatives in EdTech in Africa, as well as to build an inclusive pipeline of diverse talent for EdTech...

The World Bank EduTech team is partnering with Digital Promise and AIEngage.org to host a series of episodes about AI in Education. This week, we're exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) is enabling new forms of student learning. World Bank Senior Education and Technology Specialist Cristobal Cobo and Digital Promise Executive Director Jeremy Roschelle speak with Professor James Lester , Dist...

This week, World Bank Senior Education & Technology Policy Specialist and Global Lead for Technology and Innovation in Education Robert Hawkins speaks with the Global Digital Library ( https://digitallibrary.io ) about their joint crowdsourcing campaign with UNESCO and UNHCR ( https://digitallibrary.io/ukraine ) to translate early grade reading resources and games into Ukrainian. The campaign...

Esa semana, Iñaki Sánchez Ciarrusta habla con Santiago García, socio fundador de Qüid Lab en Colombia, a Wilmer Gallardo, especialista de innovación de World Vision en Honduras, y Galder Reguera, jefe de proyecto de la Fundación Athletic Club en Bilbao, sobre la importancia de crear contenido educativo relevante, motivador y atractivo para conectar con las y los jóvenes e inspirarlos. Du...

This week, Robert Hawkins (World Bank) speaks with Ruth Wylie (Assistant Director from the ASU Center for Science and the Imagination), Janhvi Kanoria (Director of Innovation Development from Education Above All), and Colin Maclay (Executive Director of the USC Annenberg School Innovation Lab) about the Evoke storytelling initiative. The Evoke storytelling initiative aims to create a network of in...

This week, Robert Hawkins speaks with Omar Arias, Emanuela Di Gropello, and Cristian Aedo about some of the major edtech initiatives implemented in South Asia and Latin America during the emergency phase and now in the recovery phase of COVID. Robert Hawkins is the World Bank's Senior Education & Technology Policy Specialis t and Global Lead for Technology and Innovation in Education , working...

Today, we invite you to join us for a special episode where we revisit some of our favorite moments from 2021 - conversations about blockchain, early grade reading and book distribution, the edtech ecosystem, an adaptive learning effectiveness study, and digital infrastructure - moments that are inspiring our upcoming episodes in 2022.

Today, we are focusing on Open Schools, an intervention that shows promise to support second chance education and reach students at risk to dropout. The pandemic highlighted the focus back on online learning, which was the preferred method of remote learning among high income countries but was also offered as part of multichannel strategies by middle- and low-income countries. However, online lear...

The World Bank funds education projects – about 80% of which now have an edtech component – in low and middle income countries. Many of the Ministries of Education in these countries have a growing recognition of the importance of building education ecosystems that try to encourage private sector innovation and entrepreneurs in edtech. Today, our World Bank EdTech team, Robert Hawkins and Dean Kli...

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 Pe...

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/1098...

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 Educa...

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 perspect...

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 Kar...

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,...

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 implemente...

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...

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 c...

The World Bank EdTech team recently released a paper about its edtech strategy - 5 key principles that it follows to support countries to effectively use edtech to improve the access to and quality of education globally. Today, we are speaking with the EdTech team about this strategy in Spanish. This is our first podcast in Spanish. You can download the strategy paper (Spanish versi...

The Global Education Policy Dashboard (GEPD), funded by a partnership between the World Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, U.K.’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and government of Japan, provides policymakers with a system for measuring the drivers of learning outcomes in basic education around the world. As part of this initiative, the Edtech Readiness Index aims to help coun...

In 2020, Ranjit Disale won the Global Teacher Prize, a US $1 million award presented annually to an exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to their profession. On today's episode, Ezequiel Molina , Senior Economist in the Global Knowledge and Innovation Unit at the World Bank Education Global Practice, and Adelle Pushparatnam , Education Specialist in the Global Knowledge and...

The World Bank EdTech team recently released a paper about its edtech strategy, "Reimagining Human Connections: Technology and Innovation in Education at the World Bank" - 5 key principles that it follows to support countries to effectively use edtech to improve the access to and quality of education globally. On last week's episode, we spoke with the EdTech team about this strategy...

The World Bank EdTech team recently released a paper about its edtech strategy - 5 key principles that it follows to support countries to effectively use edtech to improve the access to and quality of education globally. Today, we are speaking with the EdTech team about this strategy. You can download the strategy paper at http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/82949160686037951...

Many countries face several challenges when trying to select, design, adapt, and customize a learning management system (LMS) that meets the particular needs of their education system: finding a scalable, flexible and robust platform; ensuring the interoperability and integration with existing solutions; planning the sustainability over time, and facilitating local ownership are just some of them....