Across New Zealand, schools are seeing a drastic surge in the need to provide digital, at-home learning as the COVID-19 pandemic grows. As schools review their capacity to provide learning resources to students and whanau, the longstanding issues of the ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) model are suddenly brought to light. Students throughout Aotearoa are now leaving school facing four weeks of quarantine — without the tools to communicate and continue to pursue their learning. It’s now apparent that ICT equability should no longer be ignored.
“Access to internet-enabled equipment at homes and internet connections.”
In one sentence, it is made to sound simple, but for some households, this is no easy feat. Despite large scale investment in the promotion of digital learning; governing bodies and schools have so far provided no solutions for families who lack the devices to access this content in the first place.
Part of the issue is the inflated cost associated with digital devices — Chromebooks and PC’s contracted to schools are often marketed as costly proprietary systems. Consequently, they pose a significant financial burden on our education system. To schools, the idea of giving students these devices to use at-home sounds almost unfathomable. Given this, the government may have already quietly concluded that it is not within the scope or ability of the private sector to provide these goods and services; however, we at Remojo Tech think differently and believe that we might have the answer...
Read our full write-up at medium.com
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