This week at World Bank EduTech

week of April 26, 2021

This week, the EdTech team shares resources about the skills economy — combining digital skills and blockchain technology.

Digital Skills. On April 21 and 22, the Africa Region, with support from our EdTech team, hosted a training event on Digital Skills: The Why, The What, and the How. The event covered results of Digital Skills framework from the Digital Economy for Africa (DE4A) initiative and demand and supply of digital skills, as well as a mapping with formal education programs at different levels of the system that could produce these skills.

Teacher Digital Skills for Hybrid and Remote Learning. As countries consider hybrid learning models, the role and competencies of teachers remains central to the quality of education. Together with the Teachers team, the team is creating a knowledge pack to review the digital, pedagogical, 21st century, and socio-emotional skills that teachers require to successfully deliver remote and hybrid learning is under development.

• In Turkey, the World Bank is supporting the government to engage teachers in identifying and implementing innovative EdTech in their classrooms as part of their professional development.
• In Brazil, the Center for Innovative Teaching (CIEB) is also seeking to empower teachers to identify innovations using EdTech as part of their professional development.

Blockchain for Education Community of Practice. On April 21, the EdTech team hosted the second seminar with the Blockchain for Education Community of Practice. One of the speakers, Carissa Carter, Director of Teaching and Learning, Stanford d.school, asked, “What elements of our education systems could benefit from increased transparency, trust and equitable access?” Use cases from the African Centers of Excellence, Colombia, and Turkey were shared. Future sessions will focus on the skills economy (June), learner-centered credentials (August), assessment and measurement (October), and token economics (December).

As part of the seminar on Blockchain in Education, World Bank Education Specialist Ekua Bentil and team shared the pilot to capture credentials on the blockchain and connect university students to employers as part of the African Centers of Excellence Blockchain pilot on skills and credentials project. On our latest World Bank EdTech Podcast (Apple, Spotify), Ekua discusses the pilot with project partners Yaz El Hakim (VerifyEd), Saleh Iliyasu Maitala (IBM), and Jerry Kponyo (KNUST).

One of the promises of blockchain technology is to be able to use technology to measure learning results in a transparent way at the classroom and student level and disburse resources based on those results. The pilot in Colombia on Blockchain Technology for Youth Empowerment and Value Exchange was a first attempt at using technology to attain this level of granularity to measure student skills.

Stay tuned for new resources from our team on these topics!

Recommended Reading

Trust the Process: How to Choose and Use Edtech That Actually Works: “According to one recent survey, nine in 10 educators expect technology to play an increased role in the coming years. But the pandemic made clear that despite dramatic increases in the amount of technology used in schools, all those new tools fell short when it came to actually maintaining an effective learning experience during a global crisis.”