Education in times of pandemic has raised a series of topics that begin with the impact of technologies in educational sciences. The incorporation of platforms to give education to children and adolescents was implemented using the tools that were closest to hand. During and after these experiences throughout 2020, educators have tried to conceptualize what has been done and learned. There are some conclusions such as that dichotomy is not between the face-to-face and the virtual, but between the face-to-face and the non-face-to-face.

The 2021 school year has started in Argentina under a hybrid model, combined between around four hours of face-to-face daily, and a virtual complement. Beyond the expected and necessary return to the classroom, the public and private sectors adopted and improved the use of improvised online tools last year and say that they are here to stay.

From Educ.ar, as Laura Marés, General Manager, told Convergencialatina, they are working on the Juana Manso platform so that it is available throughout the country for free. It currently has a classroom system for primary and secondary levels - for communication between students and teachers - and can be navigated without consuming data. Soon it will add videoconferencing and chat system functions, always under a central objective of forming "a community space."

The official clarified that the goal with Juana Manso is not to extend it to all educational establishments, because certain provinces have their own platforms, for example the province of Buenos Aires, and some municipalities in that district have other options. One of the central aspects is the Data Warehouse, which gathers information of the use made by students and teachers: with this data, processed with artificial intelligence, the Evaluation Secretariat of the Ministry of Education works on the prevention of school dropouts, among others applications.

Learnings. Along with the evolution of Juana Manso, Educ.ar has enriched the collection of educational resources in the Priority Learning Nuclei (NAPs, in Spanish) and the training of teachers in virtual education and hybrid combined models. In any case, Marés warned that one of the first lessons of the 2020 experience is that in virtual spaces, synchronicity should be avoided. “The use of videoconferencing applications (Zoom and Classroom, the most widely used) is expensive, difficult to maintain, and implies an entry into the privacy of students and teachers. It doesn't work well to have 40 kids in a class like this,” she said.

That is why they are thinking of combined scenarios: using the face-to-face instance for joint work, and time at home for tasks without the use of videoconferencing (for example, reading a book or working with a manual). To promote this hybrid scenario proposed by 2021, the ideal is to combine face-to-face and non-face-to-face, instead of differentiating between face-to-face and virtual.

As will be reported in future publications of the Ministry of Education, a first lesson that emerged from the pandemic is that the synchronous experience generates tension. The space outside the school should be used, instead, to search for resources or work independently.

Connectivity. In terms of broadband access to schools, currently 40% are connected through the national Connectivity Plan. To these establishments one must add municipal and provincial ones –an area on which the level of access is unknown-. The main objective that Educ.ar will work on during 2021 is a regulation that takes connectivity as an essential service in the educational budget, that is, a percentage that is dedicated exclusively to connecting the school, as is the case with other public services.