The Weava Manual

So, can EdTech be the great equalizer of quality education for all? We believe it can, but there is rigorous work to do. For starters, governments and education institutions need to ensure learners of all ages have equitable access to digital learning tools; teachers are equipped with necessary knowledge and support to best utilize digital learning platforms for effective learning; and parents are informed on how to play a complementary role in their children’s learning process. 

Additionally, governments, EdTech companies, educators, and users of digital learning tools need to come together to design a data governance framework and set up oversight procedures to ensure that as companies collect and analyze user data to personalize learning and develop products, they also comply with guidelines and regulations on data collection, use, and protection. 

As a young EdTech start-up, Weava is on a mission to enhance personal and collective learning by helping our users tackle information overflow. Like many in the EdTech space, we are learning every day how to disrupt the status quo to pave the way for more efficient, inclusive, and equitable learning and teaching experiences. We also acknowledge both our own potential and the limitations to contribute to sustainability overall, including our environmental impact and the resiliency of our data governance – we are open to seeking support and expertise to further vet our social impact. Find out how you can support us here.

While necessitating the world’s largest digital learning experiment, COVID-19 also highlighted the digital divide that prevented low-income students from participating in remote learning, and teachers from harnessing technology to deliver engaging online lessons or tracking students’ learning progress. According to the World Bank, school closures and limited access to remote learning during the pandemic are likely to cause the global learning poverty rate to worsen from 53% to 63%, and bridging that digital divide is crucial to the provision of an equitable learning experience to all children.

Weava’s Chrome extension, with 65% of users being K12 or university students, can be installed and used by anyone for free. One unique quality of Weava is that the folders containing the highlights and notes can be shared with others for collaboration. Although the collaboration feature is only available to Premium users, Weava is offering a deep discount to all students and teachers, so that teachers can invite students to leave comments or questions on their reading assignments to get feedback from their peers and teachers. Moreover, teachers can also pre-highlight websites, news articles, or PDF documents and share them with their students for class readings. Also openly accessible for free is Weava’s rich library of resources on enhancing academic research and writing, creating engaging online lessons, and digital literacy etc., which offers support to students and teachers alike as governments and educators continue to explore solutions for effective online learning. 

We at Weava acknowledge that our features and resources are only as good as a strong internet connection and access to digital devices. As we have written in a previous article, many of the 181,200 disadvantaged children in Hong Kong had difficulty accessing the tools necessary for remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a staggering 65% of students had to study on their phone, with many having to rely on free internet from businesses such as the McDonald’s or 7-Eleven, risking infection and having their lessons disrupted when the 30-minute free Wi-Fi access ended. Nonetheless, we have witnessed a steep growth of users from emerging and developing countries utilizing Weava’s functions for free during the pandemic. For example, see below chart of the quarterly growth rate (in percentage) rising sharply after the outburst of pandemic affecting the face to face education system in Thailand, India, and Vietnam. Such growth has continued over the last two years.