Two minute read. Written by Myra Aggarwal – a grade 9 student.

Today humankind is facing a global challenge – the Coronavirus pandemic. This is an extraordinary time and extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures and resilience from all of us.

To help everyone quarantined escape boredom, and not lose focus from education and hold on to the sense of stability, many companies, schools, museums, apps etc have come forward and made available various types of activities to spend your time.

All that is free online

In many cases, the companies are making their paid services free through the rest of the school year. In other cases, they’re lifting limits to services and/or adding premium features to what’s free.The outbreak of COVID-19 has not just impacted various industries but also school students.

Amazon Global Audible books are free: You can log on to their site and hear as may stories as you like for free – from kid’s books to classics for adults, it’s all there.

TIME For Kids
Time for kids digital library free for the rest of the school year. It’s a great place for kids to read and read all they may not have had a chance to earlier.

BYJUS: the online learning app is offering free access to its complete app to school students till the end of April. Given the ongoing health crisis in the country, all students from grade first to 12th will be able to access BYJU’S learning programs for free. According to the press statement issued by the company, students in classes first to third can access math and English lessons and students in classes fourth to 12th can learn math and science concepts. Considering the rigour of the exam season, access to the learning program will further assist and help students continue with their preparation for the year-end examinations.

More than 700 published textbooks are  currently available on Cambridge Core – which is their online home for academic books and journals – to students through their university library regardless of whether they were previously purchased. Students in the United States will also be able to access free e-book versions of Press textbooks through VitalSource. In addition, existing Cambridge Core customers can request free access to a collection of reference works for libraries, during the same period, including all of the Cambridge Histories, Companions and Elements. Cambridge’s Academic publishing group is making higher education textbooks in HTML format free to access online during the Coronavirus outbreak to support universities and their students.

Cambridge is also providing free access to a growing collection of research related to the coronavirus, with relevant journal articles and book chapters until the end of May. Not only this but they have launched a campaign – Supporting Every Teacher  – and in partnership with colleagues at Cambridge Assessment English, they are producing large amounts of free, online content for teachers and learners Our Cambridge Exam Boosters series has also been digitised and made freely available.

Along with this many others have also taken this initiative like Achieve3000 is offering free access to resources for differentiated literacy instruction. Educators can access three different programs. Achieve3000 Literacy at Home offers access to non-fiction articles at three reading levels with topics covering science, social studies and current events. 

Addigy- a cloud-based Apple device management platform, has announced free 60-day access for schools. The program helps organizations deploy, manage and track new and existing Apple devices from a single console.

Adobe is offering free access to Creative Cloud tools through May for home use by students attending schools that currently only provide lab access through May.

Museums

For entertainment and relaxation Museums, historical sites and national parks have stepped up to deliver their signature experiences by offering virtual tours to anyone from the comfort of their homes.

Visitors to the Louvre can check out virtual tours of the Egyptian antiquities collection, remains of the Louvre’s moat and the Galerie d’Apollon without having to brush by anyone’s shoulders. Le Louvre in France, Sistine chapel, Yosemite National Park, Van Gogh Museum and Smithsonian National museum of national history along with several other museums can now be experienced well while sitting on your bed.

Isn’t that quite amazing? Here’s are all the links

Broadway: Not just this but for music and theatre lovers, Broadway (a theatre group in America) is offering a seven-day free trial. That means you can watch performances from Broadway, the West End, and other elite venues around the world to your heart’s content from your living room. There are ballets, plays, a good number of shows and other performances available too. As the company explained in a statement, “Broadway was created with the goal of making high-quality theatre accessible to everyone globally. On the platform, subscribers will find a combination of acquired performances including performances of “Cats,” “The King and I,” and “The Sound of Music,” along with originals the platform filmed including performances of “Kinky Boots” and “42nd Street,” from Broadway, The West End, and other elite venues around the world.

Video Games: For video gamers and people who like to compete and win Drawful 2: A super-fun Pictionary-like group game from the folks behind the beloved You Don’t Know Jack series can be played not only at home with family, but also remotely with far-flung friends and relatives. The free version is available via the Mac App Store and Steam; Nintendo Switch owners can buy it for just 9 cents. Rayman Legends can be played from Ubisoft between now and April 3. This beloved platformer normally sells for $30. It requires a Ubisoft account and the Uplay client software, both of which are free as well.

So, as you can see there are a lot of things that people can do wile quarantined and although COVID 19 has been quite harsh on us, we can surely benefit from the advantages that have been presented to us because of it. The decisions we take right now can be extremely critical in shaping the world and lives of the people of the generations to come.

Written by Myra Aggarwal

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