The Lagos State government has launched a digital learning platform that can accommodate between two and 10 million learners at a go.
Launching the EkoDigitalSchool.com Tuesday at the Ministry of Education conference room, Alausa, the Education Commissioner, Mrs. Folasade Adefisayo said the initiative was in line with Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s THEMES agenda – one of which is to promote technology-enhanced education.
The ekodigitalschool.com, developed by Chronicles Software Development Company, has curriculum-based content for all junior secondary school subjects, allows self-paced learning, provides for tests, and interaction between learners and teachers through chats and forums, among others.
The Co-founder of the firm, Mr. Oluwatosin Oluwakoyejo added that for educators, the platform allows teachers to create content, set examinations, grade pupils, monitor their performance; while for administrators, the platform provides analysis on performance in various subjects, among others.
Mrs. Adefisayo praised Chronicles Software Development Company for offering the platform, which is being hosted on the Amazon cloud service, for free for now. She said the state government would do its part to ensure it is well utilized by providing devices for public school pupils and teachers as well as internet to access its content.
She said: “We should not be reliant on private sectors, NGOs or development partners. We ourselves are going to buy the devices. They will be delivered in time for first term. We are investing significantly in these devices. We have put in Mathematics and English textbooks; good textbooks. We are going to ensure that there is success and we will even be equipping the schools,” she said.
Regarding provision of internet access to schools and remote communities, the Commissioner said the government was already working on it.
She said: “I am sure you must have seen the various coloured cables across the state. The governor has promised us that the last line of those cables will go into our schools. This has already started. One of our partners, MTN is presently piloting this wireless internet cabling in 100 of our schools across the state. We are ensuring that there is access in schools and also ensuring that the students have devices to access.
“One of the hurdles is to understand communities where they don’t even have access; where even if they have devices. We are talking to companies where they can push what they called cloud servers to those communities, where the cloud servers will be able and powerful enough to pick signals but then distribute the contents to students in those remote locations. We have piloted in one of our schools in Epe and it worked well and we are going to reach out across the state. I hope you can see that there is determination on our part that our students will not be left out of the digital world.”
Source: The Nations Newspaper.