Facebook Launches Online Resource Guide For Educators Amidst Lockdown

New Delhi: To help struggling academicians during the lockdown period, Facebook has launched an online resource guide to ensure continuity of teaching learning process through Facebook products, tools and programmes.

This resource guide named ‘Supporting Education Communities: An Online Learning Resources Guide’ will help academicians to connect with their students using Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, Facebook Live, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram.

Speaking about the guide, Director and head of partnerships at Facebook India, Manish Chopra told PTI, “In these difficult times, it is even more important for people to stay connected and have access to credible information about COVID-19. Through our online learning resource guide, we want to equip teachers, parents and relevant government officials with ample resources and tools to help them stay connected and collaborate digitally to facilitate remote learning.”

To ensure that the guide reaches learners, educational institutions and teachers across India, Facebook has partnered with UNESCO in its first phase. UNESCO will also provide support in updating and curating the guide with relevant learning resources.

This guide is currently available in five languages including English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Kannada.

It can also provide information related to COVID-19 from authentic sources.

Director and UNESCO representative, UNESCO New Delhi Cluster Office for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka Eric Falt stated that the corona pandemic has caused both a health crisis and learning crisis too.

“More than 90 per cent of the world’s learners are affected by school and university closures. In line with the global efforts, UNESCO New Delhi will focus on mobilising the national and state-level actors and resources to develop an effective and unified response avoiding overlaps for maximum impact,” he said.

Earlier, Facebook had launched Coronavirus Information Centre to provide the latest updates from MyGov Corona Hub, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) and global health organisations.