Learning inequities between students widen when instruction is exclusively remote and online content is not always context appropriate. A study of open educational resource collections found that nearly 90% of higher education online repositories were created either in Europe or in North America; 92% of the material in the Open Educational Resources Commons global library is in English.

1. Is it equitable?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the rapid shift to online learning left out at least half a billion students worldwide, mostly affecting the poorest and those in rural areas. The report underlines that the right to education is increasingly synonymous with the right to meaningful connectivity, yet one in four primary schools do not have electricity. It calls for all countries to set benchmarks for connecting schools to the internet between now and 2030 and for the focus to remain on the most marginalized.

2. Is it scalable?

Sound, rigorous and impartial evidence of technology’s added value in learning is needed more than ever, but is lacking. Most evidence comes from the United States, where the What Works Clearinghouse pointed out that less than 2% of educational interventions assessed had ‘strong or moderate evidence of effectiveness’. When the evidence only comes from the technology companies themselves, there is a risk it may be biased.

Many countries ignore the long-term costs of technology purchases and the EdTech market is expanding while basic education needs remain unmet. The cost of moving to basic digital learning in low-income countries and connecting all schools to the internet in lower-middle-income countries would add 50% to their current financing gap for achieving national SDG 4 targets. A full digital transformation of education with internet connectivity in schools and homes would cost over a billion per day just to operate.

3. Is it sustainable?

The fast pace of change in technology is putting strain on education systems to adapt. Digital literacy and critical thinking are increasingly important, particularly with the growth of generative AI. Additional data attached to the report shows that this adaptation movement has begun: 54% of surveyed countries have defined the skills they want to develop for the future. But only 11 out of 51 governments surveyed have curriculum for AI.

In addition to these skills, basic literacy should not be overlooked, as it is critical for digital applications too: students with better reading skills are far less likely to be duped by phishing emails.

Moreover, teachers also need appropriate training yet only half of countries currently have standards for developing their ICT skills. Few teacher training programs cover cybersecurity even though 5% of ransomware attacks target education.

Sustainability also requires better guaranteeing the rights of technology users. Today, only 16% of countries guarantee data privacy in education by law. One analysis found that 89% of 163 education technology products could survey children. Further, 39 of 42 governments providing online education during the pandemic fostered uses that ‘risked or compromised’ on children’s rights.

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Media contacts:

Clare O’Hagan: [email protected] +33 (0) 1 45 68 17 29

Elsa Weill: [email protected] +33 630 62 18 75

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Notes to editors:

The Global Education Monitoring Report: Established in 2002, the GEM Report is an editorially independent report, hosted and published by UNESCO. At the 2015 World Education Forum, it received a mandate from 160 governments to monitor and report on progress on education in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with particular reference to the SDG 4 monitoring framework, and the implementation of national and international strategies to help hold all relevant partners to account for their commitments.

When technology entrepreneur Artur Sychov’s father was diagnosed with cancer, he was forced to accept a day may soon come when he wouldn’t be able to speak to him again.

The 38-year-old knew he would give anything to have another father-son conversation after his father’s death.

So, using artificial intelligencehe got to work on a way that could make it happen for others in his position.

Artur has created a virtual reality tool called “live forever mode”. It features digital avatars who can simulate a person’s voice, mannerisms and movements after just 30 minutes of the user being observed.

The goal is for the avatar to live forever online as a memory of its creator so future generations of their family can interact with it.

Artur struggles to see any downsides to it.

“You can get to know the person,” he says. “You can hear their voices… You get to talk to them about different topics, and you get to inject a little bit of their personality.

“And with time, you’d actually be more and more precise. It would be more like them.”

It is just one of the many ways in which companies across the world are reimagining our relationship with the dead – but there are concerns.

“It’s really pushing on that fundamental anxiety that we have about the end of our being,” says Elaine Kasket, a cyber psychologist and author.

“Some people have a lot of anxiety around that… I guess I have a few concerns about playing on those really existential fears as a means of selling your products.”

Artur’s company Somnium Space is trialling its “live forever mode” at its headquarters in Prague, Czech Republic, before its official launch.

Somnium Space is a 3D metaverse platform that users can access with a virtual reality headset. In this space, they exist as an avatar that can play games, create artwork, attend events and buy and sell virtual goods from other users.

It has already been downloaded 300,000 times since it was set up in 2017, and around 50 to 250 users log into the platform every day.

Artur uses the tool himself, with his avatar styled as a blue robot.

“You sound familiar,” Artur says, wearing a digital headset.

“I’m actually Artur,” his avatar responds.

The real Artur poses a challenge: “You know I’m Artur. You’re not Artur. Who are you?”

The avatar mocks him: “I can see you’re trying to start a joke there. It seems like you might have got cut off. Want to finish the joke?”

When I try the technology myself, a user known as UltraLord “shakes” my avatar’s hand and greets me with a virtual hug. Despite not feeling a physical sensation, I felt hugged.

The idea of ​​continuing your legacy is a driving force for some users.

UltraLord, who is based in Budapest, Hungary, says the concept of immortality is exciting.

“In a way, we all want to live forever in the things that we do, and we want the ideas of us, the legacy of us to live on throughout our generations,” he says.

“So being able to actually create an idea of ​​me that future generations can look back upon and kind of like, say and talk to and reflect on. It’s very exciting.”

He wants his avatar to outlive him so his future relatives can experience it.

He adds: “Instead of my kids having to hear stories of me and kind of make an idea of ​​what they think I am in the past, they can actually talk to me and really know who I was, and that will give them a stronger sense of self.”

Read more:
Woman ‘chats’ to dead mother using AI – with ‘spooky’ results
I lost my job after AI tool assessed my body language

UltraLord is aware he is creating something he won’t be able to control after he has died, but he has made his peace with the idea.

“If it ever goes rogue, then I really don’t know what to do,” he says. “Well, I wouldn’t be able to do anything…”

The “live forever mode” tool is expected to officially launch later this year but there remain unanswered questions.

It will be paid for by a subscription fee, but what that fee will be is undecided, as is who will pay for it after the creator dies.

Users can buy and sell virtual goods in the metaverse, and their avatars can continue to do this after they die if they have signed up for the live forever mode. But it is up to users to make sure their family can access their accounts and benefit from their posthumous earnings.

Somnium Space says it does not keep any of the data used to train the avatar on its servers. It is all stored locally on the computers of its users across the world, and they can control how much or how little to store.

But what happens to personal data after you die is a point of contention.

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In practical terms, if someone with malicious intent were to get hold of your information soon after your death, and before your family had a chance to decide what happened with your data online, you could be impersonated and your data manipulated, Ms Kasket warns, adding that you could even continue your former employment.

“If you’re a university lecturer, maybe that university will have you keep on lecturing,” he added.

“Whether your family will see any money from that is open to question, because there’s no regulation around this.”

As technology evolves, we are looking at a future in which we can extend our legacies online and connect with dead loved ones in ways we didn’t previously think were possible.

But with that comes a warning: we also have to prepare for these practices to have far-reaching consequences on our legacies and on the real lives of our loved ones.

White Rabbit (WR) is a technology developed at CERN, in collaboration with institutes and companies, to synchronize devices in the accelerators down to sub-nanoseconds and solve the challenge of establishing a common notion of time across a network. Indeed, at a scale of billionths of a second, the time light takes to travel through a fiber-optic cable and the time the electronics take to process the signal is no longer negligible. To avoid potential delays, the co-inventors of White Rabbit designed a new ethernet switch.

First used in 2012, the application of this fully open-source technology has quickly expanded outside the field of particle physics. In 2020, it was included in the worldwide industry standard known as Precision Time Protocol (PTP), governed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

What’s more, CERN recently launched the White Rabbit Collaboration, a membership-based global community whose objective is to maintain a high-performance open-source technology that meets the needs of users and to facilitate its uptake by industry. The WR Collaboration will provide dedicated support and training, facilitate R&D projects between entities with common interests and complementary expertise and establish a testing ecosystem fostering trust in products that incorporate the open-source technology. At CERN, the WR Collaboration Bureau – a dedicated team composed of senior White Rabbit engineers and a community coordinator – will facilitate the day-to-day running of the Collaboration’s activities and support its members.

“A key distinctive feature of White Rabbit, as opposed to other technologies that have been developed since, is that it is open source and based on standards”, says Javier Serrano, Chair of the White Rabbit Collaboration Board and co-inventor of the technology . Companies and institutes can therefore adapt it to their needs and incorporate it in their products and systems, while the technology, in turn, benefits from a large community of developers. “The first step to foster industry uptake was to include WR concepts in the IEEE standard. Through this endeavour, we established many links with industry,” said Maciej Lipinski, Chair of the White Rabbit Collaboration Council and senior White Rabbit engineer at CERN.

White Rabbit is used in the finance sector as well as in many research infrastructures, and it is currently being evaluated for application in the future quantum internet. The technology could also play a key role in the future landscape of global time dissemination technologies, which currently rely heavily on satellites. The infrastructure for the dissemination of time is essential to the economy and underpins the most critical national infrastructure. Governments and industry across the globe are therefore striving to find alternatives to distribute a reference time, such as the one WR could offer via optical fiber, with telecom and power grid companies starting to test WR in their networks.

The WR Collaboration comes at a moment when many sectors are undergoing a profound transformation with regards to their technological timing. “The WR Collaboration will provide a neutral gathering point around this open-source technology and define a long-term common vision, establishing a solid ground from which innovation can thrive,” continues Amanda Diez Fernandez from CERN’s Knowledge Transfer group and the White Rabbit Community Coordinator.

To learn more about how to join the White Rabbit Collaboration, go to: www.white-rabbit.tech

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From 21–22 March, the White Rabbit community met at CERN to celebrate the launch of the WR Collaboration. To find out more, listen to the recorded talks of the event.