A Zimbabwean based platform, SMBLO is in talks with schools in rural areas to create programs that will allow students from low-income homes to access the platform while adhering to social distancing.
Such programs include Sponsor A Student Program and the development of a data provision system that will give data to the students that need it.
CEO of SMBLO, Amanda Marufu says, the main problem the e-learning platform has encountered in schools was data challenges.
“So for now with that( data problem), we have talked to Econet since they are offering cheaper data for schools, teachers and staff employees of schools etc so as for everyone to access data through that (Sponsor A Student Program) program, ” Marufu said. (sic)
“We are also looking for donors who can actually fill in and help so that they outright sponsor schools or sponsor particular students… on data. So we have calculated how much these costs will be.” (sic)
SMBLO, which has been in existence for more than one month, has been offering an e-learning platform at $1 a month with a motive of making sure that there is no child left behind in the quest to educate all.
“In the long run, we are actually working on an offline system that just works completely offline and this will be done through peer to peer communication,” Marufu said.
“For a place where there is no internet at all, we are working on so far, compressing things like videos into blackboard or whiteboard whereby it will still be look and feel like a video but will be compressed.” (sic)
The CEO also revealed plans to create a system like a Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) for files to be sent at a very smaller rate that is cheaper for everyone to be able to transmit.
SMBLO was created during the current lockdown focused on schools that have not been permitted to start the second term due to COVID-19.
Statistics show that Zimbabwe has almost 7 million students who will be out of school during the lockdown, with 902,327 students in Pre-primary, 2,788,693 in Primary, 1,953,352 in Secondary and 1,354,863 in Tertiary institutions.