Teachers, learners and parents have come up with new ways of sustaining lessons through various social media and short message services (SMS) platforms during lockdown, 263Chat has established.
Although this is happening informally, under teacher- parent arrangement, with the later having to pay a little fee for the service, a survey by this publication revealed that most parents were happy to subscribe.
This comes in the wake of forced school closure and a nationwide lockdown set in place by the government last month as authorities sought to minimise the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
“We note that the lockdown has negatively affected learners due to social gathering restrictions which implies that pupils can nolonger gather and study together over the holiday. So we thought of creating whatsapp groups and also use text messages in issuing assignments,” said one teacher who spoke on conditions of anonymity.
The teachers have a well structured teaching guide which they abide to for the hourly daily sessions with learners.
This helps them to craft and send simplified notes via whatsapp on learners’ mobile phones.
In-depth discussions are made on these platforms just like in a physical class.
“We either use Whatsapp or SMS. Usually on whatsapp we create groups which i administrate and hence send notes and make thorough discussions,” he added.
Interestingly, this has also made some shy students in class to be able to participate confidently in virtual discussions, the teacher says.
Also positively, the lockdown has made the system much dependable as parents are also brought on board to monitor students from cheating for answers when they do weekly examinations, he says.
“This is proving to be useful for my two children who instead of spending time over unproductive social media content, they are now learning virtually,” says Tekla Madahama, a mother of three school going children in Waterfalls.
Most enterprising teachers are charging US5 or the equivalent in local currency per week for each learner while some are doing it for free just to keep their pupils learning in these unprecedented times.
Interestingly, rural teachers are not to be left out and are riding with the technological tide faster than urbanites it has emerged.
The Amalgamated Rural Teachers Association of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ) has been running an online school for rural learners across the country before the start of the Coronavirus induced crisis.
The online school which started a few months ago is open for all pupils and its for free.
“We are using whatsapp as our medium of communication with our learners. We are excited with the response from the learners and the parents,” ARTUZ president, Obert Masaraure said on a whatsapp interview.
The online school has so far reached out to more than 2000 ordinary level learners and Over 500 Grade 7 pupils who are due for examinations this year.
The challenge has however been to universally incorporate all rural pupils due to unaffordability of mobile phones gadgets which are beyond the reach of the impoverished rural folks.
“We have a challenge in accessibility of our content by the marginalised learners in these rural settings who cannot access the ICT gadgets which are needed for them to access whatsapp. This is really dragging us back,” he added.
Observers have called for an all inclusive coordination by all stakeholders to ensure that all learners access education during this lockdown.
The high cost of data has also been identified as a major stumbling block for virtual learning and services providers have been urged to avail favourable data packages.
While desperate times have called for unprecedented ways of conducting lessons, one thing that remains certain is learning has just been reinvented for the better.
