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Norton IT entrepreneurs create online education app.

by BustopTV

By Trevor Makonyonga

MANY a times people use the “our problems, our own solutions” notion but are quick to criticize innovations by fellow countrymen. Comparisons are often made accompanied by claims that a particular innovation has been ‘plagiarised’. In this light, youthful Norton entrepreneurs, Vismak have come up with an easy solution for online education, an application that can be used during this COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

With the government currently unsure of how to conduct E-learning and available online educational apps turning out to be too complicated to use, especially for young learners, Vismak’s Educo app seems to be the ideal solution for the current challenge.

Bustop TV managed to tour the app and interview Vismak’s Managing Director, Benjamin Mike Shumba who said that they wish to make education accessible from ECD to tertiary level.

Shumba said, “Educo school portal is a web App that was designed by the IT entrepreneurs of Vismak investment, a Zimbabwean owned Company. The portal is an inspiration to the team as it helps accelerate the transition of technology into the future from ECD to Tertiary level. The App is about maintaining Direct interaction between teacher and students being provided by our brick and mortar schools, providing schools an online portal for high quality personalized experience. The system is called Educo, a name inspired from Latin meaning educate, advocates for the need to educate the young generation for a brighter future especially in these dark times.”

He added that the platform is easy to use and very secure. He said that the application is good for Zimbabwean students as it aligns with the syllabi requirements of the country.

“The move and motive for the application is to expose children or young generation to ICT before reaching tertiary levels. By learning skills like internet surfing using platforms like google scholar trains students to acquire information in a professional manner. The new curriculum in general motivated the move for the App as it denotes on of its major agendas to move to ICTs in all its educational levels by 2022 thereby Educo facilitate the move. The system is basically a virtual school combining three panels which are Admin(head), Teachers and Students, allowing the whole school to run and conduct lessons from one portal with classrooms that contain subjects and students that have been assigned to them. The teachers need only to enter a class he/she is teaching and pick a subject that they are conducting at that time according to the timetable. The teachers then delivers a lesson to the whole class just like our current brick and mortar schools. The system has online books that teachers use to assess student’s work,” said Shumba.

He further explained how simple it is to access the app which has already been taken up by a local school, Vimbai High School.

“ADMINISTRATOR: is where teacher, students and subject are assigned and arraganged according to the running of the brick and mortar school such that teacher and student panels are automatically arranged by the system. Basically this is the supervisor.

TEACHERS: Teachers access their classes and subjects they are teaching respective to the classes they are teaching. Teacher can upload lessons using any format.

STUDENTS: Is where the time table put by the class teacher appear to every student who is in that class. They access their lessons and exercises from teachers through online books and uploads.”

Also speaking about the platform, CEO of the company and Software Developer, Elton Nyahora further explained on how it differs from other platforms and security.

Nyahora said, “We are targeting government schools from ECD to high school, private colleges and Teachers colleges helping them maintain direct interaction when teaching. Educo portal is customizable according to the level its being used, from ECD to tertiary level they have different structures in terms of Learning Areas. Educo accommodates all functionalities of the level its being applied to, from ECD to Tertiary as they different structures in terms of the learning area. Our system uses high level encryption of information transmitted from a user’s device to our system. Once a user logs in, credentials can only be altered by the user.

The platform is paid up monthly with services ranging from Stock Package of USD $15 to Premium Package of USD $30 per month.

“Educo portal is flexible and easy to set up as it requires basic information for sign up. It consumes the least bandwidth because our servers respond instantly and it was designed to ensure smooth transition of data. Currently it is an independent system that does not permit access from other systems with the vision of incorporating every tool that is helpful in learning like an online library. Integrations are however possible as per school request.”

After engaging the Mash West PED, the platform is in use in Norton at Vimbai High School and lessons have officially commenced. Currently, Vismak is working with most primary schools in Norton to have them on the system to come in handy during this COVID-19 pandemic.

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