South Africa is currently under lockdown, and will remain so until midnight on 16th April, as the country fights the spread of COVID-19. The lockdown brings with it several challenges, with one of the most significant being education, and particularly how educators can continue with their respective curriculums while students are at home.

With the precise end of the COVID-19 outbreak unknown, it will become necessary for educators to have solutions to workaround the fact that the traditional classroom environment is not available to them.

This brings us to the Jakes Gerwel Fellowship, which is hosting a series of webinars during April called Education in Interesting Times.

“In response to the current disruption in the education program, The Jakes Gerwel Fellowship has gathered top local and international leaders in education and will be unpacking how best to respond to the recent, unforeseen changes through the ‘Educating in Interesting Times’,” the organisation explained in an announcement.

The Fellowship, which specialises in university scholarships and leadership development as part of a fellowship, will be taking several issues during the webinar series, such as:

• “What low-tech and no-tech strategies can be deployed to effectively support learning through this period? – through an exploration of existing and potential solutions that can be deployed quickly, easily and broadly to low-resource areas.
• Identify opportunities of maximising high-tech solutions and strategies for schools and institutions that are tech ready or can deploy technological solutions quickly.
• Develop resilience strategies – what are the systemic changes that can be implemented to improve the resilience of the education system?
• Looking into the future – how are future education leaders navigating this current disruption with an eye to creating solutions that will help buffer the education system against such disruptions in future?”

As for the webinars, there will be one happening each week for the next three weeks, and kicking off on 3rd April.

The dates and times for the webinars are as follows:

• Webinar One – Educating in Interesting Times, Friday 3rd April, 10:00-12:00
• Webinar Two – Exploring Low-Tech Opportunities, Thursday, 9th April, 10:00-12:00
• Webinar Three – Exploring High Tech Opportunities, Friday 17th April, 10:00-12:00

If you’re an educator interested in what will be discussed, you can register for the webinars here.

[Image – Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash]