Open Development & Education

Strengthening Foundational Learning in Eswatini

Reading Time: 2 minutesIn classrooms across Eswatini, a quiet transformation is taking place. Teachers are gaining confidence in their practice, and...

The Journey of Teacher Learning Circles in Malawi’s Mathematics Curriculum Reform

Reading Time: 3 minutesWhen teachers in Malawi gather after a long day of lessons, the last thing they need is another...

Shaping the Future of EdTech: Welcoming Our New Latin America & Caribbean Fellows

We are thrilled to welcome 26 senior education leaders and policymakers from across Latin America and the Caribbean as t...

The Hidden Data Crisis in EdTech

Reading Time: 7 minutesBackground At Open Development and Education, we had a goal to develop a generalisable AI model...

Road to Success? Mapping the mechanisms of effective EdTech

Reading Time: 5 minutesTeachers know that no app or gadget can replace great teaching, but can the right tech, when use...

Meet bChatTogether: Multiple LLM Collaboration, Right in Your Google Docs

Reading Time: 2 minutesReimagine the way you work with bChatTogether, a Google Workspace add-on which works seamlessly...

Celebrating World Kiswahili Day: Honouring a Global African Language

Reading Time: 2 minutesEvery year since 2021 on July 7th, the world comes together to celebrate World Kiswahili Day, a...

Are Malawi’s Classrooms Ready for the Numeracy Revolution?

Reading Time: < 1 minuteA recent OpenDevEd report, through its core involvement with EdTech Hub, offers a candid and in...

Building Climate-Resilient Education Systems: A Call to Action

Reading Time: 4 minutesIn an era where the effects of climate change are becoming increasingly undeniable, the educatio...

Celebrating National Disability Employment Awareness Month: The Importance of Inclusion in the Workplace

Reading Time: < 1 minuteEvery October, we observe National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM) to recognise t...

Join the Conversation: Validation Meeting for the Eswatini project

Reading Time: 2 minutesDate: 9 October 2024 Location: Mbabane, Eswatini OpenDevEd attendees: Gugulethu Dube (Research A...

Enhancing classroom comfort in Tanzania: Leveraging AI for predictive indoor temperature modelling

Reading Time: 5 minutesAuthor: Olamide Eso https://doi.org/10.53832/opendeved.1157 In an exciting effort to improve lea...

Economic and educational benefits of reduced classroom temperatures

Reading Time: 6 minutesProfessor Pawel WargockiInternational Centre for Indoor Environment and EnergyDepartment of Envi...

School Buildings Infrastructure in East Africa

Reading Time: 7 minutes Author: Mauricia Nambatya https://doi.org/10.53832/opendeved.1136 In East Africa, school build...

Education buildings: resilience to global climate change and avoidance of inequalities

Reading Time: 5 minutesPawel Wargocki (DTU SUSTAIN and Technical University of Denmark) https://doi.org/10.53832/opend...

Understanding the barriers and enablers of effective Communities of Practice in Sierra Leone through a collaboration between Dubai Cares and Open Development and Education.

Reading Time: 3 minutesDespite the challenges faced by many charitable organizations and the development sector during...

Introducing the next iteration of our sensor box

Reading Time: 7 minutesBjörn Haßler and Bernhard Bablok This blogpost was amended on 2024-02-02, correcting the power c...

How to build an IoT device with low-power sleep

Reading Time: 10 minutesAt OpenDevEd, we’re committed to sharing our learning with the wider development community. Thi...

Benefits of using ISSB in school buildings

Reading Time: 4 minutesMauricia Nambatya (Haileybury Youth Trust) Mauricia Nambatya is a Civil Engineer with an MPhil i...

Is indoor environmental quality in my school classroom safe?

Reading Time: 8 minutesDOI: 10.53832/opendeved.1028 Pawel Wargocki (DTU SUSTAIN and Technical University of Denmark) Pr...

IMPROVING TANZANIAN CLASSROOMS: Conducting surveys in Tanzanian Schools – Second pilot

Education and climate change – What retrofits could make classroom environments more conducive to learning?

Reading Time: 7 minutesReference: 10.53832/opendeved.1014 Authors: Oluyemi Toyinbo and Xuzel Villavicencio

IMPROVING TANZANIAN CLASSROOMS: Conducting surveys in Tanzanian Schools – Second pilot

Reading Time: 7 minutesFunded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Improving Learning Through Cl...

IMPROVING TANZANIAN CLASSROOMS: Trialling environmental sensors in Tanzanian Schools – First pilot

Reading Time: 5 minutes

The Importance of Climate-Friendly School Buildings in Africa

Schools on the African continent should focus on building climate-friendly schools to cope with the effects of climate c...

School: A Second Home for the Children

A school should provide a healthy environment that promotes the learning and development of children. No health risks sh...

Kam, leh wi it

Research subjects should occupy a primordial place in our research planning. Understand the impact of our interactions a...

Access

Free access to information is not only about access to knowledge but also about the capacity to make knowledgeable decis...

The “Improving Learning Through Classroom Experience” Study

The Improvement Learning Through Classroom Experience (ILCE) is a programme that focuses on the relationship between nat...

The Safe Schools programme

The programme's objective is to foster resilience in the education sector at different levels, so schools and communitie...

No teacher is an Island

The study focussed on 10 primary schools in Western Area Rural, on the Freetown Peninsula, and three cycles of implement...

Decolonising Edtech

Reading Audrey Watters: A reflection on personalised learning via education technology through a decolonial lens

At EdTech Hub, we’ve been reflecting on how coloniality is embedded in the work we do: from the colonial roots of the in...

Remote learning solutions for resilient education systems: Seven resource packs to guide governments and policymakers

Countries need to urgently invest in developing contextually appropriate Learning Recovery Programs that can help recove...

Our maths videos for teachers

Reading Time: 2 minutesIn the context of a numeracy programme (in sub-Saharan Africa) we had a conversation a few days...

Can digital personalized learning end the world’s education crisis?

EdTech products can offer many solutions in lower-income countries. A new analysis by UNICEF shows good practices and ar...

Decolonizing EdTech in Africa: picking local EdTech solutions over foreign solutions

The only sustainable EdTech solutions in Africa will be those developed by local firms, solving for the needs of African...

5 principles to create effective Communities of Practice across governments

In this blog, we introduce key principles to implement international, cross-government COPs to support the design of eff...

Guidelines for Mapping Education Data in Sub-Saharan Africa

This guidance note would not have been possible without the key insights from the partners we interviewed.

Decolonising Open Educational Resources (OER): Why the focus on ‘open’ and ‘access’ is not enough for the EdTech revolution

Open Educational Resources have offered a number of promises and opportunities, primarily in terms of customising learni...

Tich Mi Ar Tich Dem

Reading Time: 4 minutesOver the past two decades, Sierra Leone has faced a series of shocks: a civil war, landslides, E...

Better Purpose on the Science of Learning

Science of Learning report summarises how children learn in general (learning maths and how to read, in adolescence and...

Decolonising EdTech: A resource list for tackling coloniality and digital neocolonialism in EdTech

Reading Time: 8 minutesAt EdTech Hub, we’ve been reflecting on how coloniality is embedded in the work we do: from the...

Policymakers and Girls’ Education in Emergencies in Kenya

Reading Time: 3 minutesIn a recent report, we explore the extent to which policymakers in Kenya have produced or used q...

Using ‘building blocks’ to develop digital education platforms cheaper and faster

Do you want to know more about how to use ‘building blocks’ to develop digital education platforms cheaper and faster? C...

The Story of ‘Unlocking Data’

Do you want to understand how we can access, use, and share education data effectively to tell the story of education in...

Closing the educational gap: An OECS Academic Recovery Programme

Teaching and learning in the OECS have been strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw mass school closures,...

St. Vincent Cooperative Bank partners with UK-SVG Friends for SVG relief efforts

Reading Time: 3 minutesCross-posted from https://uksvgfriends.org/. The UK-SVG Friendship Trust has teamed up with the...

Advancing evidence-based decision making in LMICs: Focus of EdTech Hub’s work

Reading Time: 3 minutesThis blog post is a cross-post from EdTech Hub‘s blog https://edtechhub.org/2021/05/07/advancing...

5 Considerations When Using Technology for Teacher Professional Development in Low Resource Areas

Reading Time: 5 minutesRepost from HundrEd.org The right type of teacher professional development (TPD) is one of the...

WELCOME DONNA FRASER OBE OLY TO TEAM UK SVG Friends

Reading Time: < 1 minuteFour times Olympian for Team GB announced this week on LinkedIn that she is now an official Amb...

More donations on the ground, 40ft container shipped AND Amazon Wishlist donations. Let’s keep going!

Reading Time: 2 minutesThis week we have helped even more people on the ground including a donation of 1,500 Sanitary p...

L’utilisation des preuves pour renforcer la formation pédagogique à travers les technologies à Madagascar

Using evidence to strengthen tech-supported teacher professional development in Madagascar

Reading Time: 6 minutesReposted from EdTech Hub. Original authors: CAITLIN MOSS COFLAN, SAALIM KOOMAR AND HASINIAVO RAS...

L’utilisation des preuves pour renforcer la formation pédagogique à travers les technologies à Madagascar

Reading Time: 7 minutesCross-posted from https://edtechhub.org. Original post APRIL 23, 2021 BY CAITLIN MOSS COFLAN, SA...

Diario El País

Reading Time: < 1 minuteTaskeen Adam comments on international development projects in the latest article of ‘El País’...

Approaching £100k

Reading Time: < 1 minuteThis story has been cross-posted from https://uksvgfriends.org/2021/04/13/approaching-100k/. Gr...

Sierra Leone series: Plan International and the importance of community support for distance teacher professional development programmes

Reading Time: 3 minutesCross-posted from the EdTech Hub – Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Over the past few months, th...

Mother Language Day 2021: Improving data on mother-tongue languages for better learning outcomes

To celebrate International Mother Language Day 2021, EdTech Hub’s Björn Haßler spoke with Alice Castillejo and Mia Marzo...

El Diario de la Educación

Reading Time: < 1 minuteEl Diario de la Educación published a nice profile article on Björn Haßler today. Tweet here: h...

TVET Research in SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA — New Report

Reading Time: 2 minutesWe are pleased to announce that a new report detailing the state of research on Technical and Vo...

Launching SharePlusCode: An app for finding your geolocation in remote rural locations

Reading Time: 8 minutesSome years ago, Open Development and Education supported Tanzania Development Trust (TDT) in th...

AFRICA’S COVID-19 OPPORTUNITY

Educators in Africa are optimistic about the opportunities that Covid-19 brings for reform and innovation in education.

Five lessons learnt from Bangladesh’s experience responding to COVID-19

Tom Kaye of OpenDevEd, Md. Afzal Hossain Sarwar of a2i, and Iqbal Hossain of UNICEF Bangladesh consider how Bangladesh's...

Equitable access to education

Reading Time: 3 minutesThis post originally appeared here on 25th May 2015 under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. This...

Higher accuracy GPS on mobile phones

Reading Time: 2 minutesThis post originally appeared here on 21st July 2018 under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. GPS...

Is there learning continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic? Six Lessons

Reading Time: 5 minutesAn effective education response to the COVID-19 pandemic needs to be built on solid evidence and...

Building effective COVID-19 education response plans: Insights from Africa and Asia

We are working with many countries to help them design interventions to support learning during this crisis.

Department for International Development merger with Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Let us learn from our past

Reading Time: 3 minutesOn June 16th, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his decision to the House of Commons to...

Reflecting on epistemic injustices in open and online education

In memory of Hector Pieterson and the hundreds of student protesters that were brutally murdered by police on the 16 Jun...

Open Development & Education Statement on Black Lives Matter

Reading Time: < 1 minuteEnding racism is a fundamental part of human rights, we unequivocally assert that Black Lives M...

Helping you find and compare EdTech tools

The EdTech Hub’s mission is to increase the use of evidence to inform decision-making about education technology.

Supporting innovation in the time of COVID: What we’ve done and what we’ll do next

Our colleagues quickly surfaced the best evidence on how to deliver education content to children at home in low-resourc...

Activating local study-groups for children’s learning—an equitable EdTech response?

An equitable educational response to the COVID school closures must recognise that, in low and middle-income countries,...

From the Helpdesk: Observations and guidance on educational response planning during the COVID-19 crisis

Amid one of the biggest global disruptions to schooling in living memory, countries are quickly developing distance educ...

Why the COVID Crisis Is Not EdTech’s Moment in Africa

Reading Time: 6 minutesAuthor: Lee CrawFurd, Centre for Global Development This blog was originally posted on the Cente...

EdTech call for ideas: What have we learned from the applications?

Nearly 20% of the world’s population is now in need of an alternative way to learn. Not just learners, but teachers, par...

Who has what? Assessing who has access to what devices in the education response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Reading Time: 6 minutesAs with education in general, our ability to respond to COVID-19 in education depends significa...

Francophone countries and COVID-19 EdTech response

One thing about coronavirus is clear — it does not respect borders. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in school closure...

Learning through television in low-income contexts: mitigating the impact of coronavirus (COVID-19)

Reading Time: 3 minutesWritten by Joe Watson, research assistant at the University of Cambridge. This blog was first pu...

The role of interactive radio instruction in the coronavirus (COVID-19) education response

Reading Time: 3 minutesThis post originally appeared here on 23rd April 2020 under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Th...

The privilege of #pivotonline: A South African perspective

Reading Time: 8 minutesTaskeen Adam, https://opendeved.net/2020/04/22/the-privilege-of-#pivotonline/, 2020-04-22, 10.52...

Continue or reboot? Overarching options for education responses to COVID-19 in low- and middle-income countries

The COVID-19 pandemic has far-reaching consequences for public health, including socio-economic issues. The pandemic als...

The role of the Konnect student portal in Bangladesh’s COVID-19 education response

Reading Time: 2 minutesLast month, the Bangladeshi government announced their decision to suspend all schools to limit...

The EdTech Hub’s Helpdesk and COVID-19: Demand-driven advice

With more than 1.5 billion children now affected by school closures, ministries of education and decision-makers around...

The Role of Interactive Radio Instruction in the COVID-19 Education Response

Reading Time: 3 minutesAt a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has forced over 1.5 billion students out of school, governm...

Educational Response to COVID-19 from Jordan and other Arab Countries

Reading Time: 3 minutesAuthor: Nour Awamleh, Research and Program Development Coordinator, Queen Rania Foundation Updat...

Arabic version of Design Thinking for Educators

Reading Time: 2 minutesLaunched in January 2019, Activating EdTech Jordan is a project that aims to introduce agile dev...

Learning through television in low-income contexts: mitigating the impact of coronavirus (COVID-19)

One of the many consequences of COVID-19 is that more than a billion caregivers will soon face the stark (and often scar...

Five things to think about for out-of-school learning during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

Reading Time: 6 minutesThis blog post is a cross-post from EdTech Hub‘s blog https://edtechhub.org/2020/03/24/five-thin...

An inclusive approach to searching for evidence on EdTech in low- and middle-income countries

The EdTech Hub has undertaken a large-scale search for publications on technology use in education in low- and middle- i...

Activating EdTech Jordan: Sprint 6

Reading Time: < 1 minuteThis week sees Sprint 6 for Activating EdTech Jordan. It also marks roughly one year since the...

Sandboxes: My experience participating in the sandbox alpha

Reading Time: 4 minutesThis blog post is a cross-post from EdTech Hub‘s blog https://edtechhub.org/2020/01/31/sandboxes...

Sandboxes: Testing the strategy in Malawi

Across the Hub, we’re proponents of using our tools and approaches on our own thinking.

Sandboxes: our approach to systemic experimentation

What’s a sandbox you ask? First in the series, this blog explains what you need to know about the Hub’s approach to expe...

15 EdTech research papers that we share all the time

Reading Time: 7 minutesThis blog post is a cross-post from EdTech Hub‘s blog https://edtechhub.org/2020/01/24/15-edtech...

18 large-scale EdTech initiatives on our radar in 2020

During the EdTech Hub’s inception phase so far, one question we hear a lot is: “What interesting or notable EdTech initi...

Reviewing the research literature in educational technology for development: Balancing rigour and inclusivity

Reading Time: 4 minutesThis blog post is a cross-post from EdTech Hub‘s blog https://edtechhub.org/2019/12/18/reviewing...

New Website: opendeved.net moves to wordpress

Reading Time: < 1 minuteThe Open Development & Education website has migrated to WordPress! Please bear with us as we r...

New report on TVET in Sub-Saharan Africa

Reading Time: < 1 minuteOur new report on technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in Sub-Saharan is avai...

Hello, I’m Björn, Director of Research

I'm Dr Björn Haßler, one of the three Directors of Research for the programme

Maps and Meaning – Sierra Leone’s Digital School Census and what it means for school-level location and accessibility data collection

In 2018, the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education (MBSSE) in Sierra Leone launched the Free Quality School E...

The EdTech Hub’s approach to amplifying impact through engagement

If you have spent time working in the education sector, you’ll know that even marginal gains are worthy of celebration.

Posts

Posts

Strengthening Foundational Learning in Eswatini

The Journey of Teacher Learning Circles in Malawi’s Mathematics Curriculum Reform

Shaping the Future of EdTech: Welcoming Our New Latin America & Caribbean Fellows

The Hidden Data Crisis in EdTech

Road to Success? Mapping the mechanisms of effective EdTech

Meet bChatTogether: Multiple LLM Collaboration, Right in Your Google Docs

Celebrating World Kiswahili Day: Honouring a Global African Language

Are Malawi’s Classrooms Ready for the Numeracy Revolution?

Building Climate-Resilient Education Systems: A Call to Action

Celebrating National Disability Employment Awareness Month: The Importance of Inclusion in the Workplace

Join the Conversation: Validation Meeting for the Eswatini project

Enhancing classroom comfort in Tanzania: Leveraging AI for predictive indoor temperature modelling

Economic and educational benefits of reduced classroom temperatures

School Buildings Infrastructure in East Africa

Education buildings: resilience to global climate change and avoidance of inequalities

Understanding the barriers and enablers of effective Communities of Practice in Sierra Leone through a collaboration between Dubai Cares and Open Development and Education.

Introducing the next iteration of our sensor box

How to build an IoT device with low-power sleep

Benefits of using ISSB in school buildings

Is indoor environmental quality in my school classroom safe?

Education and climate change – What retrofits could make classroom environments more conducive to learning?

IMPROVING TANZANIAN CLASSROOMS: Conducting surveys in Tanzanian Schools – Second pilot

IMPROVING TANZANIAN CLASSROOMS: Trialling environmental sensors in Tanzanian Schools – First pilot

The Importance of Climate-Friendly School Buildings in Africa

School: A Second Home for the Children

Kam, leh wi it

Access

The “Improving Learning Through Classroom Experience” Study

The Safe Schools programme

No teacher is an Island

Reading Audrey Watters: A reflection on personalised learning via education technology through a decolonial lens

Remote learning solutions for resilient education systems: Seven resource packs to guide governments and policymakers

Our maths videos for teachers

Can digital personalized learning end the world’s education crisis?

Decolonizing EdTech in Africa: picking local EdTech solutions over foreign solutions

5 principles to create effective Communities of Practice across governments

Guidelines for Mapping Education Data in Sub-Saharan Africa

Decolonising Open Educational Resources (OER): Why the focus on ‘open’ and ‘access’ is not enough for the EdTech revolution

Tich Mi Ar Tich Dem

Better Purpose on the Science of Learning

Decolonising EdTech: A resource list for tackling coloniality and digital neocolonialism in EdTech

Policymakers and Girls’ Education in Emergencies in Kenya

Using ‘building blocks’ to develop digital education platforms cheaper and faster

The Story of ‘Unlocking Data’

Closing the educational gap: An OECS Academic Recovery Programme

St. Vincent Cooperative Bank partners with UK-SVG Friends for SVG relief efforts

Advancing evidence-based decision making in LMICs: Focus of EdTech Hub’s work

5 Considerations When Using Technology for Teacher Professional Development in Low Resource Areas

WELCOME DONNA FRASER OBE OLY TO TEAM UK SVG Friends

More donations on the ground, 40ft container shipped AND Amazon Wishlist donations. Let’s keep going!

Using evidence to strengthen tech-supported teacher professional development in Madagascar

L’utilisation des preuves pour renforcer la formation pédagogique à travers les technologies à Madagascar

Diario El País

Approaching £100k

Sierra Leone series: Plan International and the importance of community support for distance teacher professional development programmes

Mother Language Day 2021: Improving data on mother-tongue languages for better learning outcomes

El Diario de la Educación

TVET Research in SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA — New Report

Launching SharePlusCode: An app for finding your geolocation in remote rural locations

AFRICA’S COVID-19 OPPORTUNITY

Five lessons learnt from Bangladesh’s experience responding to COVID-19

Equitable access to education

Higher accuracy GPS on mobile phones

Is there learning continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic? Six Lessons

Building effective COVID-19 education response plans: Insights from Africa and Asia

Department for International Development merger with Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Let us learn from our past

Reflecting on epistemic injustices in open and online education

Open Development & Education Statement on Black Lives Matter

Helping you find and compare EdTech tools

Supporting innovation in the time of COVID: What we’ve done and what we’ll do next

Activating local study-groups for children’s learning—an equitable EdTech response?

From the Helpdesk: Observations and guidance on educational response planning during the COVID-19 crisis

Why the COVID Crisis Is Not EdTech’s Moment in Africa

EdTech call for ideas: What have we learned from the applications?

Who has what? Assessing who has access to what devices in the education response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Francophone countries and COVID-19 EdTech response

Learning through television in low-income contexts: mitigating the impact of coronavirus (COVID-19)

The role of interactive radio instruction in the coronavirus (COVID-19) education response