UNITED NATIONS, April 20 (Xinhua) -- The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced the expansion of a global learning platform to help children and youth affected by COVID-19 continue their education at home.
The Learning Passport was originally designed to provide education for displaced and refugee children through a digital remote learning platform. With the spread of COVID-19, it is now being rolled out to facilitate country-level curriculum for children and youth whose schools have been closed due to the pandemic, said UNICEF in a press release.
"We need to come together and explore every avenue to keep children learning and help them through this difficult time. With long-term partners like Microsoft, we are able to swiftly deploy innovative, scalable solutions for children and youth. The adaptations made to the Learning Passport are a powerful reminder of what we can achieve together for children as the crisis deepens globally," UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore was quoted as saying.
Kosovo, Timor-Leste and Ukraine -- which have closed their schools in the past weeks due to COVID-19 -- are the first to roll out their online curriculum through the Learning Passport. The content available to schoolchildren includes online books, videos and additional support for parents of children with learning disabilities, said the press release.
"Just as COVID-19's impact has no borders, its solutions must not have borders, as it requires the collaboration across public and private sectors to ensure every student stays engaged and continues learning," said Brad Smith, president of Microsoft. "UNICEF's Learning Passport is uniquely positioned as a scalable learning solution to bridge the digital learning gap for millions of students to bring their classroom into their home during the pandemic."
Children and young people continuing their education online can do so through a country-specific platform, accessed via their country's Learning Passport page.
The platform for each country provides a digitized curriculum with textbooks and a selection of supplemental content, in national languages, that is jointly curated at the country level to best serve learners' and educators' specific needs.
The Learning Passport, which started off as a partnership between UNICEF, Microsoft and the University of Cambridge, captures a record of the curriculum subjects each student learns and guides learners with little additional support needed. Enditem
