An education tech infrastructure company, Skool Media Nigeria Limited, with support from the Federal Ministry of Education has developed a programme code-named ‘Unity Schools Virtual Learning’ to be run on a virtual classroom platform called EDMODO.
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The intervention is designed to expose students to e-learning in a bid to fill the vacuum created by school closure nationwide occasioned by the dreaded COVID-19 pandemic.
The Director and Chief Executive of Skool Media, Mr Moses Imayi said that students and teachers of the 104 Federal Government Colleges across Nigeria will be the major beneficiaries of the programme; explaining that while the Unity Schools Virtual Learning will run on Edmodo, telegram will be used as a clearinghouse to organize the students and share critical updates on the programme.
He noted that two telegram groups, code-named ‘Unity Schools Virtual Learning’ (Senior School) and ‘Unity School Virtual Learning’ (Junior School) have been created to distribute starter packs and class codes instructions to students and selected teachers for the programme.
According to Imayi, Edmodo is a robust virtual learning platform that has the capacity to accommodate the entire population strength of all the Federal Government Colleges, while also enabling the building of network among ‘Unity School communities.’
This he said makes schools and classrooms across the nation to grow their professional learning networks and work with a community of educators.
The Nigerian educational system, like in other countries of the world, has experienced a hold-up after the figure of COVID-19 cases began to grow over the last few weeks.
With federal and state governments issuing a directive for academic activities to be suspended, virtual learning has appeared to be the way out for every stakeholder in the educational sector which, over time, has had little or nothing to write home about.
The concern of many Nigerians, however, remains if this initiative will get to the corridor of the poorest of the poor whose children are in dire need of a channel through which they can acquire knowledge made available by western education.