COVIDEA
COVID Education Alliance
The Digital Education Agora (DEA)
Welcome to the Agora
The Digital Education Agora (DEA) concept is used to bring together, on an easily accessible virtual platform, innovative and integrated tools, content and methods to address the education and learning requirements of humanity in a rapidly-evolving digital world. As such the Agora performs a central convening and coordinating function in operationalizing the overall COVIDEA mission, which is to ensure students anywhere in the world have the skills and competencies they need to lead productive and fulfilling personal and professional lives.
The Agora is a friendly and accessible cyberspace, open to all. It is a place where knowledge, teaching and learning, and technology come together to better serve learning communities and their diverse stakeholders: students of all ages, their parents and carers, teachers, policymakers, administrators, digital providers and tech companies.
At the same time, in line with the spirit of COVIDEA, the Agora goes beyond being a resource and go-to place for educational knowledge and skills. It is a place to learn values; to understand the importance of governance and citizenship; to appreciate behaviours that underpin our diverse cultures and societies: at a local community, national, regional and international scale. A place to understand and challenge the threats we face, from the climate emergency and calls for greater sustainability, to cyber attacks, the proliferation of false information and the undermining of democratic values.
Building a virtual space for digital teaching and learning
The basic concept of the Agora is similar to the International Space Station, or a future moon base. Its modular approach allows for new virtual rooms, communities and resources to be added as needed.
Development of the Agora is thus guided and shaped as a sequence of inter-locking elements. Each constituent part builds towards a whole that is greater, more wide-reaching and with a longer-lasting impact than any of the individual parts could hope to achieve alone. Major components of the first iteration of the Agora are listed below.
The Agora Café
Imagine a central hub, the heart of the Agora: your point of entry is this easily accessible central meeting place. The Café is a relaxed and welcoming environment.
The Library
Right next door and tightly connected is the Library: the knowledge and resource centre of the global educational and learning community. The transition from the social café environment to the dynamic and curated repository of knowledge is seamless.
The Digitarium
On one side of the Library is the Digitarium, where visual displays allow you to get acquainted with the latest technological developments in support of modern-day education.
The Company Showrooms
A marketplace where commercial providers advertise their products, carefully vetted to ensure their added value towards achieving the COVIDEA goals, notably the education SDGs and other SDGs
For more information on the Digital Education Agora, please contact us at info@foggs.org.