Emergencies and education.

It is no secret that climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic have created unstable and unfathomable circumstances globally. Those who took the greatest hit during the pandemic were educational institutions including millions of schools and universities. The inability to successfully conduct schooling during the dreadful lockdowns and social distancing was a wake up call on an international scale that the education sector was completely unprepared for such situations.

Before COVID-19 it was easier to overlook the lack of facilitation of education during regional natural disasters, be it earthquakes or floods. These problems were considered temporary, and provision of consistent education was not exactly a priority for victims. By the mid-20th century gears were shifting as education was declared a human right in Article 26 under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This means education has in fact become a priority without discrimination for all races and socio-economic classes over the past several decades.

However, with the concerning rise of climate change and its unpredictable effects, there is a need for all nations to maintain a preparedness in efforts to provide normalcy in rehabilitation of disaster victims. This is where centuries of technological innovation and advancements post Industrial Revolution come into play.

Although mankind has been able to invent and incorporate technology of great utility to the education sector, there was no framework in place to effectively facilitate education beyond a physical classroom setting. Despite the scattered, unpopular online learning courses, a dynamic, independent structure for a thorough educational environment simply did not exist.

Following COVID-19, academics and relevant education sector stakeholders recognized the potential of fulfilling the basic right of education regardless of physical circumstances. This in turn meant that education would be more inclusive and easily accessible. Not to mention, E-learning, which is fairly recent nomenclature designated to a method of teaching and learning that utilizes digital technologies and tools to deliver educational content and facilitate student-teacher interactions, is cost-effective and even flexible.

Not everyone is able to afford private education, and often public schools in developing countries lack the resources to provide a quality education to its learners. E-learning helps combat this by saving governments overhead costs...