Sesame Workshop's international response to COVID-19

The article briefs about the effectiveness of Sesame Workshops during COVID-19. Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind Sesame Street, has become the world's largest informal educator, using media to address challenging experiences in children's lives for 51 years. Building on the trust parents have in Sesame Street, authors responded swiftly to the pandemic, creating a global multimedia initiative - Caring for Each Other - to address the needs of children and families, model coping techniques, and provide strategies to help adults talk with children about COVID-19 and its challenges. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Voices and images of hope: The rebirth of educational television in Ecuador in times of COVID-19

The article discusses about the effectiveness of the educational television in Ecuador in times of COVID-19. In Ecuador, educational television was already on intensive care before the advent of COVID-19, with meager financing or even with zero budget, permanently reprising programs that were produced several years ago. Yet, even under these adverse circumstances, and thanks to international cooperation and private funding, we have been able to reach almost every family in our country with content from the curriculum, but also with social-emotional support and with programs about daily learning at home. We have been able to strengthen international alliances and to work together for a better tomorrow. From now on, our focus will be on how to make this an experience for the future, not just for COVID-19, and to promote the institutionalization and revalorization of educational television in Ecuador, in order for it to be perceived as a right by the citizens of our country. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Digital Divide vs. Inclusive Thinking: The Educational Television in Turkey

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools closed down in many countries, and the students participate in virtual-only classes. However, as there is no equality in access to technology and connectivity among the populations, this has become a major problem for the millions, intensifying the digital divide. Thus, in order to mitigate this digital gap, many countries have taken several measures to use educational technology in different ways. Turkey is one of them and has supported distance education through the use of educational television. Therefore, this chapter explores the implementation of educational television by introducing its background, use, and contributions to foreign language instruction and contextualises it in a scholarly discussion of the digital divide and inclusive education within the local context of Turkey. Ultimately, the chapter provides recommendations for the policymakers to support inclusive education to embrace wide masses of learners. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

A Worldwide Journey through Distance Education--From the Post Office to Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Realities, and Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Surprisingly, distance education is quite an old concept. Its origins date back to the first correspondence-based course, which took place via the postal service in Boston, USA, in the 18th century. Rapid technological developments, especially in video and audio streaming, have increased the availability of such courses and moved learning into the virtual world. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we are witnessing an accelerated revolution in the learning process, as nearly all forms of education have been shifted online. Will this have a destructive effect on the human psyche? Is humanity sufficiently aware and ready for such a dramatic change? Will we return to physical in-classroom studies, or is remote distance education set to become the new norm? In particular, in medicine, computer science, fine arts, or architectural design, such a rapid change in the way students learn can be quite challenging. In this paper, we provide an overview of the history of distance learning, taking into account teachers' and students' points of view in both secondary and higher education.

Data Disaggregation for Inclusive Quality Education in Emergencies: The COVID-19 Experience in Ghana

The process of data analysis provides, undoubtedly, some of the major challenges facing organizations during the implementation of interventions in emergencies. The challenges are primarily due to the lack of direct access to beneficiaries and the rapidly evolving nature of emergencies. This paper outlines how Plan International's Making Ghanaian Girls Great! (MGCubed) project used phone-based surveys to assess the uptake of a Ghana Learning TV (GLTV) programme implemented in partnership with the government. Due to the emergency context and the need for real-time information to guide the implementation of this intervention, there was little time to undertake a major statistical analysis of survey data. This paper discusses how the MGCubed project adopted a simple data disaggregation method using a logic tree technique to gain valuable insights from the survey data. The method allowed for exploring the insights of the data set in real-time without requiring more complex and time-consuming analysis. All views expressed in this article are the author's and not of FCDO.

Parents' Views on Distance Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This study was conducted to reveal how parents perceive the distance education process during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study group consists of 15 participants in Lüleburgaz district of Kirklareli province. The case study design, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study and data were collected online with a semi-structured interview form. Demographic characteristics, problems experienced by parents in distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic, positive and negative experiences, and opinions were interrogated via "Google Forms". The descriptive analysis and content analysis methods were preferred to analyse data. The results showed that parents attributed the inability to learn efficiently during the COVID-19 process to the inefficacy of online education, distraction, anxiety, environment, and noise. Trainings can be given to parents so that they can help their children efficiently in the distance education process. It is recommended that internet infrastructure be strengthened to deal with connection problems.

Tuning in: Using EdTV to supplement student learning

The opportunity gap is a persistent problem in education that has been intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is important that education stakeholders turn to creative and engaging means to support student learning, especially during interruptions to learning. One tool that has been developed to help mitigate this disparity of resources is educational television (EdTV). The literature provides evidence that supports the positive impacts EdTV has on learning. There has been a growing surge of content targeted for children with the expansive development of web-based streaming services. The plethora of programs available can make it challenging for caregivers and educators to determine which shows are high-quality and are conducive to student learning. Through a review of the available literature, Tuning In: Using EdTV to Supplement Student Learning: A Guide was developed to help inform caregivers and educators the features of high-quality EdTV programs. This guide also includes characteristics specific to different program goals, such as social-emotional learning, math and numeracy skills, reading and literacy skills, and language development for dual language learners. The purpose of this project is to provide guidance and help caregivers and educators be critical consumers of media. The guide can be used for children in pre-school through high school. While the guide used as much empirically supported information as possible in its development, it is worth noting that the guide itself has not been empirically validated. Nonetheless, this guide can help education stakeholders begin to understand what high-quality EdTV should look like. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Experiencia de TV educativa en Ecuador en el marco de la pandemia

: The global emergency caused by the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted several contemporary social processes, including school education. The study had a descriptive character, with the purpose of examining each of the stages of preparation, implementation and evaluation of the audiovisual products distributed weekly by open television signal. The results highlight the academic gains in the educationalcommunication training of future professionals, as well as the foundation of an educational television production process and, finally, their scope in terms of social responsibility. The conclusions show the need for an educational process supported by the media, reflective and flexible to changes, which promotes current techniques such as storytelling and the optimization of resources as a proposal for innovation and sustainability.

Is It Possible to Teach English through EBA TV? Exploring Student Teachers' Concerns and Self-Efficacy Beliefs

This qualitative study explored student teachers' perceptions and feelings about teaching English in an emergency remote teaching platform, Educational Information Network TV. To this end, sixty-eight student teachers participated in this study. The participants were first invited to watch English language courses specifically designed for primary and secondary-level education provided through this medium of instruction. They were later asked to write two-page reflective journals on the strengths and weaknesses of these courses drawing upon their own feelings and opinions. Their written reflections were content analyzed, and the findings revealed two main themes: student teachers' concerns and self-efficacy beliefs. More specifically, the student teachers were concerned about macro-level factors, pedagogical issues, teachers' competencies, and context-dependent factors. Additionally, the findings shed light on the contributing factors to their self-efficacy beliefs. They attributed their future success to student-oriented factors, teacher-oriented factors, and parental involvement. The overall findings showed that their concerns outweighed their perceived self-efficacy beliefs. We hope that these findings will inform second language teacher education programs for the future since it could be of pivotal importance to prepare student teachers for distance or online learning platforms by helping them deal with their concerns and enriching their self-efficacy beliefs in their own teaching contexts.