Teachers, parents and students are finding it difficult to keep in contact with one another. Finding reliable, easy to use digital education tools has also proven difficult during the first few weeks of the lockdown due to Coronavirus pandemic. Two EU projects are providing free online services to help teachers, parents and students to keep in touch and to excel while at home.

The EU funded project Up2U provides a portfolio with tools, which revolutionise teaching methods. The Up2U team decided to make its platform available in only two weeks when it was clear that teachers as well as students were struggling with access, connectivity and motivation during the first few weeks of the lockdown due to COVID-19.

The GoLab Ecosystem uses innovative learning technologies for STEM subjects offering a large collection of virtual labs for teachers and students. Teachers can also make their own labs on the platform called Golabz. 

The openUp2U tools set from the Up2U project provide a complete digital environment for high-schools and universities. It has four tools allowing users to create their own courses, store their own content and also remotely attend and participate in the online courses. Students, teachers and professors will be able to create, share & collaborate, as well as attend and store the digital multimedia content produced.

The project is also building a community that can support the new trends and methods of digital teaching and learning. Up2U provides a number of tools and services that can support high-schools and universities in improving the digital teaching and learning practices in a safe and secure environment. These tools allow greater ease of communication inside and outside of the classroom, improving interactions and providing new ways to access knowledge in the digital age. The project is coordinated by GÉANT, the pan-European data network for the research and education community.

Thousands of schools all over the world remain closed for the next weeks or even months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Golabz platformoffers an ecosystem for online STEM teaching (STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).The platform and all tools (including premium labs) are available free of charge.

The GoLabs initiative was first created by the EU funded FP7 project Go-Lab and then further improved and expanded in the follow-up project, Next-Lab funded under Horizon 2020. Both were coordinated by Universiteit Twente of the Netherlands. The projects created a sharing and authoring platform called Golabz with a large collection of online labs. Here students can try out individual apps learning about STEM subjects and teachers can test interactive inquiry apps, combine labs and apps into Inquiry Learning Spaces, which can be shared with students and colleagues.