The phrase school is 90 percent learning and 10 percent teaching, has been taken too literal by tuition center, Wordcrackers who have introduced an online learning application to assist students in real time.
The learning platform which has been dubbed the e-ithute learning management system, is a web-based system which connects students with teachers anywhere in the world. The platform offers an online an interactive service and it can be accessed through their website. The platform is said to be compatible with smartphones, laptops, tablets and even desktop computers.
The tuition center offers tutoring and remedial services to students from primary to tertiary level and partnered with Malepa technology to develop their platform. The platform can be accessed on their Wordcrackers website.
Wordcrackers Managing Director Sydney Sebifelo said e-ithute will give his company an upper hand in the sense that it is the only one with a platform that has been designed locally and learners can access it online.
He said e-ithute is about interacting with students and making sure they get all the content that they may need. The platform allows for tutors to administer assignments, quizzes and even tests.
“You cannot do these things through the available platforms and our platform allows the tutor to demonstrate through a digital whiteboard. The tutor can have a virtual interaction with students and the students will see what the tutor is doing in real-time,” he said.
Explaining the motivation behind the learning management system, Sebifelo said “one of the motivating factors is the Covid pandemic. It has really disrupted everything even the way we deliver our education. As we were planning our year and looking forward, we saw that it would be needful that we prepare for now and the future. It seems now and going forward we are going to be having lerning happening online rather than the traditional method.”
Though they launched the platform as web based, Sebifelo explained that they will soon have other ways of reaching their clients who might not have smartphones in the near future.
All subjects are covered on the platform except for the more practical ones such as Design and Technology, Home economics to name a few.
Easy to use and easy to access are some of the words Malepa Tech Managing Director Lazarus Takawira shared on what they look for when developing an application such as this.
He said “what we look at is how do we make it easier to use and accessible to people in this case the students. How do we also make it easier for tutors themselves to teach, do we provide the necessary resources such as tablets, for them to be able to deliver education efficiently. Secondly we make sure to encompass all the features that are needed for it to be an e-library for discussions and interactions.”
According to Takawira students will not be paying anything extra to what they have been paying for physical interaction with tutors, only difference here is that their platform is online.
Sebifelo encouraged Batswana to be more open minded towards technologies such as these and make the most use of them. He said “let us not fear or hold pre conceived misconceptions towards technology. Technology is no longer the future but the now.”
