In moving to distance learning during the pandemic, many countries chose a centralized approach that not only allowed them to reach a larger audience, but also streamlined the transition to “remote.”
China demonstrated an original approach, where several of the country’s largest corporations – Huawei, Alibaba and Baidu – participated in the creation of a distance learning system.
The unified national online educational platform was developed in just a few weeks. This system with 169 video lessons in 12 subjects based on the curriculum, electronic textbooks, and tests united more than 7,000 servers, and over 50 million schoolchildren were able to study on it simultaneously.
The pre-pandemic Chinese online education platform Yuanfudao has also grown significantly. In October, it announced it had raised $1 billion in investment, bringing its capitalization to $7.8 billion, making it the most expensive EdTech startup in the world. All told, the online education market in China is projected to reach $99.3 billion in 2023.
In France and Finland, the transition to “distance learning” has been seamless; here, even before the pandemic, there were strong remote education systems
In Finland, teachers used a variety of apps and online learning tools, including Finland’s Qridi, Google’s Classroom, Meet and Duo, Microsoft’s Teams, Zoom and WhatsApp.
Children without personal computers were given laptops to take home, and the Wilma platform was set up for official communication between parents, teachers and students.
Schools in some regions have returned to normal operations
Games and simulations were also used in education: VirtualAutoedU, Sandbox or DigiVirtu.
In Austria, the national TV station ORF 1 began producing educational programs for students in different age groups: from 06:00 to 09:00, broadcasts for primary school students, followed by educational reports and documentaries for students over 10 years of age.
Students could not only watch the programs, but also ask questions through a special messaging system. In Germany, the public television channel ARD has joined remote education by launching the program “School at Home. The channel offers play-based learning for preschoolers and elementary school students, as well as serious multimedia learning materials and virtual classes for high school students.
Bulgaria also launched educational TV programs, but on satellite channels BNT 2 and BNT 4. In addition, all schools received accounts for the Microsoft Teams platform, and for teachers, the Ministry of Education and Science developed the National Electronic Library for Teachers (e-Content Repository), which stores materials for online learning, including video lessons, tests, movies, exercises, entertainment training programs, etc.