Continued Learning during COVID-19: Supporting at-home learning with Kolibri
Learning Equality is working to provide teachers, administrators, non-traditional educators, such as parents and coaches, community facilitators, and students around the world with the resources they need to quickly set up learning spaces at home, to allow for learning to continue outside of school, without requiring Internet after the initial set-up.
Last week, we shared some initial guidance on when Kolibri is best positioned to be a value-add for use at home as well as some simplified guidance to support users, content creators and governments.
Now, we have created new materials for using Kolibri in a variety of different at-home learning contexts, with pedagogical guidance for:
- facilitators who are instructing using distance learning (via WhatsApp and other messaging platforms)
- parents/guardians who are at home with their learners
- learners who are independently facilitating their own learning pathways.
So let's get started!
Support for facilitators who are instructing from a distance
- Using messaging platforms to share Kolibri resources with learners. This resource can be used in conjunction with the lesson template to support distance learning.
The guide is a step-by-step walkthrough for downloading and sharing resources from Kolibri over messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Viber. Please note that Kolibri does not have the functionality to share content directly from Kolibri to other messaging services, but this guide provides support on downloading and sharing resources in a method external to Kolibri.
2. A guidance template for facilitating distance learning.
This template can be used by facilitators who are supporting learners from a distance. This model uses messaging apps to share lessons and resources, with options for working with learners who may or may not have access to Kolibri.
Support for parents/guardians who are coaching their children at home
1. A template to guide parents/guardians who are working with their children at home.
This template helps parents plan for their child’s learning at home, either with continuing subjects their children were previously learning at school and/or with exploring new topics that may be of interest.
Supportive materials for self-directed learning
1. Kolibri activities choice board for self-directed learning.
This self-directed learning board guides learners on how to engage in activities with resources of various subject areas found in the Kolibri Content Library.
2. A template for creating self-directed lessons.
For learners who are independently driving their own learning pathways, this template can be used as a guide to determine topic areas of focus and setting goals for their learning.
We hope you find these materials useful. All resources highlighted in this blog post are available here.
We know that this time is challenging for parents, learners, and educators around the world and we will continue to do our best to support continued learning using Kolibri.
Contributing to our ongoing work in supporting continued learning during COVID-19
We would love to hear your ideas on how to improve these materials and develop others in the future, and welcome you to share your experiences with one another. Please leave questions, comments, and suggestions on how you are using Kolibri at home on our community forum.
