Most governments around the world have temporarily closed educational institutions in an attempt to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. These nationwide closures are impacting over 91% of the world’s student population. Several other countries have implemented localized closures impacting millions of additional learners. The figures of the crisis in education are dramatic: 1,579,634,506 affected learners, 90.2% of total enrolled learners, 191 country-wide closures. The worst that this situation entails is an unwanted effect: the widening of the digital divide that already exist in education. In less than one month, almost the global educational community has been closed all around the globe. And teachers, students and parents have been to face with a new unknown and unpredictable situation. No rules, no methodology, connectivity, pc´s or tablets available for all…on-line platforms…and they, all together with public and private institutions, were looking for solutions to implement in an equality and safety environment. Many “futuristics” are talking about unrealistic scenarios and solutions that are far away to provide real solutions for a dramatic real-life situation. We cannot and should not allow these solutions to be trivialized. We are talking about our future and the future of our children and citizens. On-line learning, blended learning, virtual learning, immersive learning…future learning…old methods and receipts, already well known for many years, into a new paradigm. It is not the right approach. We can not substitute our presence in the classroom with in a on-line conference or virtual platform, using the same tools and methodologies. With a great question mark around evaluation and what to evaluate. It is not to include new tools or devices in the existing ecosystem, to reinforce it or support it across the network or virtual platforms, that may or may not conserve the old tools and methodologies. And that’s not an easy task. It was not resolved during the last recent years and we need to accelerate the process right now. It is more like an Impossible Mission, but we need to face with that asap.
