Boot camps of hope for Nigerian kids in neglected communities

JamieSue Goodman, an employee at Google, was part of the team that developed an Applied Digital Skills curriculum that teaches students how to use technology to accomplish real-world tasks. Available for educators worldwide, 360,000 students have used the materials since its launch and 50,000 teachers have registered on the site. Students and teachers alike attest to how fun, engaging, and useful the education is.

BitLab Innovation Hub offers a STEM program geared at out-of-school children, which provides hands-on training to prepare them for careers in technology. The school has trained 105 children so far.

Among the chief concerns of parents and guardians whose children are navigating remote schooling, is keeping up with different methods of learning—especially when it comes to math. In New Hampshire, students and their parents and/or guardians are learning how to best support learning math, specifically when it involves methods unfamiliar to them. Parents and students can access teachers during virtual office hours, rely on support websites like Khan Academy, and attend school-wide meetings where they review the course material ahead of time.

School districts and cities in California are looking to create their own local Wifi networks as a long-term solution to the digital divide, and an alternative to hotspots. Some are even becoming internet service providers themselves (ISP) — efforts, they say, that will make it easier to provide internet access to those who can’t afford it.

In Nashville, school officials quickly found out that English Learner families were technologically falling behind and not logging into class. The school district decided to help families by creating 10 in-person tech hubs, where students could get more specilialized help. “By October, the hubs had seen more than 5,000 families.”

High schools and colleges across California are turning to virtual campus tours and remote recruiting in order to appeal to college-bound students. College representatives are hosting Zoom sessions to connect with students and hosting college fairs online. Although the virtual aspect has decreased the excitement of being on campus in person, it has also widened accessibility to students who wouldn't have otherwise been able to attend for a variety of reasons.

Pandemic-induced uncertainty for schools, and their students, is creating wider learning gaps, especially for Black and Latino students. Two nonprofits, The Hidden Genius Project and INTech Camp for Girls, both of which provide STEM-focused learning for middle and high school students, are shifting their previously in-person programming to a new virtual landscape by hosting virtual summer camps, specialized Zoom learning sessions, and developing ambassador programs.

One quarter of undergraduates attending American higher education institutions are parents; however, the number of campuses with childcare facilities has continued to decrease. Individual professors are incorporating new policies into their syllabi that allow kids to sit in on class when other arrangements fall through and mothers to leave class to breastfeed. "Letting kids in class is a welcoming gesture that can set the stage for or accompany the more systemic and substantive supports that student parents need for success," says the Institute of Women's Policy Research's executive director.

Minnesota schools began a comprehensive program aimed at assisting children of minority groups to successfully navigate the college application process and push them towards higher education.

The online education platform Flowdiary is bridging a language gap in the industry by offering training courses in Hausa, so young people in Hausa-speaking communities across Africa can learn the necessary skills for a career in technology.