Tech Roundup Jun. 26, 2020 | WhatsApp is Brazil’s new education gamble

You’re reading The Brazilian Report’s weekly tech roundup, a digest of the most important news on technology and innovation in Brazil. This week’s topics: Using WhatsApp for education. Facebook getting ahead of Congress when it comes to fake news policies. And more.

Brazil attempts to bridge education gap with WhatsApp

As the pandemic widens the tech gap in Brazilian education, one platform decided to resort to popular app WhatsApp Messenger to reach the most vulnerable share of Brazilian students. Aprendizap, a tool created by Fundação 1Bi alongside Fundação Lemann, offers content for middle and high school students for free, in a chat format.

How does it work? Aprendizap arose as an emergency solution to provide children with learning material during the pandemic, says Débora Nunes, product and solutions analyst at Fundação 1Bi. The idea is for the content to be “digestible” for students without access to the assistance of teachers, and it should be made accessible to the highest number of children possible.  

• The content is based on the national curriculum.
• Students may study at their own pace: either doing one class per day or downloading the content provided for the week all at once. By the end of ten classes, they receive the answers to their exercises.
• Users may receive content from different grades through the same phone number, helping families with more than one child of school age.

Why WhatsApp? Widespread in Brazil, access to WhatsApp is often offered for free by telecom operators, making it the easiest way to reach the most vulnerable children, explained Ms. Nunes. “Any product focused on public education must have the student as a protagonist, so there is...