The digital platform is an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) with easy access to subject-specific resource banks and resources that adapt to the learner and content creation tools.
The platform made operational earlier in March under the impetus of the Global Coalition for Education and Unesco, proposes to make quality educational resources available to 6.6 million French-speaking pupils in West Africa. The platform [https://imaginecole.africa] officially launched in Dakar, aims to ensure pedagogical continuity, pool educational resources and strengthen the capacities of those involved in distance education. By offering printable resources, the platform takes into account the reality of digital exclusion: eight out of ten pupils in sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to the internet.
Each of the ten countries concerned (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea Conakry, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo) will have a specific entry point where they can add their own resources. In this way, they will be able to put together their collections in order to respond to local contexts.
The health crisis has caused an unprecedented learning emergency warranting the need for such a response. The Imaginecole platform developed by Canopé, an operator of the French Ministry of Education together with other partners, resulted from the desire expressed by French-speaking education ministers to engage in a solidarity initiative. The platform is accessible to students, teachers and designers of online courses. The site allows the platforms of each state to be enriched and all productions to be shared. In addition to these resources, this initiative relies on the capacity given to teachers to create, in French, courses adapted to the level of the pupils, based on the national programmes. With this platform, it is also possible to produce digitally enhanced versions of existing textbooks in a very short time.
Launched in April 2020 by France and Unesco as part of its Global Coalition for Education, the project also aims to unite French-speaking education systems in Africa around the production and sharing of resources for learning, teaching and, more particularly, digital training for teachers.
ImaginEcole ensures pedagogical continuity and strengthens the resilience of education systems in the face of the current crisis.
Claudette CHIN
