WIM no. 17 Spring 2020

מכון ויצמן למדע Homeschooling in the time of corona The Davidson Institute offers distance-learning solutions S chools everywhere have closed due to the spread of the novel coronavirus, and teachers are turning to remote learning to keep their students on track. If the online world wasn’t already a central fixture of our lives, now the Internet has become a primary portal to the outside world for parents and kids cooped up at home—and in Israel, school lessons and assignments have shifted almost exclusively to the online space. The Davidson Institute of Science Education at the Weizmann Institute, which operates dozens of curricular and extracurricular programs, is on the front lines of this effort with its robust Davidson website. It launched a new site called Stuck at Home ?, which offers a suite of digital science activities for the entire family. Stuck at Home? includes videos, articles, puzzles, science experiments that can be conducted at home, and other innovative science and math activities. The Davidson Institute has shared the link to this content via social networks, groups within the Ministry of Education and WhatsApp groups. The response has been overwhelming: On the first day after schools in Israel were closed, the Davidson Institute website was flooded with users—about 250,000. Before the crisis, the site received about 20,000 visits per day. While most surfers are accessing the site from Israel, several thousand are from other countries as well, primarily the US. While Stuck at Home? is in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, and efforts are underway to translate it into Spanish. Science on demand The site offers a diverse range of science-related topics and it is also a portal to other Davidson content, such as its free and popular Science VOD page, which includes an extensive library of videos on demand. Davidson also launched a page with a suite of articles on the COVID-19 outbreak, as well as posts related to virology and epidemiology in general. The staff is also maintaining a daily report tracking the spread of the virus. V isit the 'Stuck at Home?' website. Coronavirus Response Weizmann MAGAZINE