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By Ackel Zwane | 2020-04-11
In the wake of a growing crisis due to the lockdown in response to the threat by the killer Coronavirus disease some teachers have put to good use the user friendly social media platforms to keep the lessons flowing.
The proactive teachers when it became obvious the nation and the world over was gearing for a total shutdown, organised their pupils in groupings, forming WhatsApp groups per subject thus keeping in constant interaction. A learner with a specific question simply sends it to the teacher who in turn provides the sought assistance.
Experts say WhatsApp is a free messenger application that works across multiple platforms like iPhone and android phones, and this application is being widely used among undergraduate students to send multimedia messages like photos, videos, audios along with simple text messages. Since internet facility is required for using WhatsApp, lots of information can also be accessed in real time, and sharing that information through technology is both instantaneous and convenient.
Some teachers are putting to good use the lockdown. Instead of being bored stiff with no work, no sporting activity, no watering hole and most importantly no teachers’ gathering for the toyi-toyi protests to demand Cost of Living Adjustment, teachers have found a really novel yet profitable way to burn time.
It was surprising this week when some teachers wishing to attend workshops for lessons that were to be given via radio for schools, were stuck at St Theresa’s High School hall in Manzini where they were to meet officials who never showed up. This, therefore, means that not all learners are privileged with having smart teachers who continue to give lessons even during the lock down without exposing to danger both tutor and pupil. Pupils learning either via radio or via WhatsApp are fortunate because they can also make use the assistance of their parents. Very few parents nowadays are illiterate. They carry the most expensive of gadgets and make good use of the internet to even assist their children in compiling and submitting assignments or tests via email.
This puts to the test the disaster emergency plan for the education sector. Surely no one saw coming the magnitude of the Covid-19 problem but immediately it landed some countries were quick to respond with both feet instead of wailing and swinging arms in the air in protestation as though the problem would simply disappear because of tears. If we had embraced technology at the opportune time we would have long crafted the Plan B for all learners during this lockdown. We would have budgeted for the rollout of data and packaged the learning material in such a way it is handy for multimedia transportation between readers and teachers.
The Institute of Distance Education at the University of Eswatini pioneered a well structured mode of instruction, the introduction of e-learning. Since it was launched it has been growing in strides but now the rest of the nation has been slow in embracing digital education.
Interest
First to dangle a feather was Ngwane College Principal Dr. Amos Mahlalela who has told his students that it would not be in the interest of anybody to start bickering this time around, all of them must take lessons online and also write examinations online. The learners were complaining about lack of learning gadgets or materials in that they had left their books at the college when the lockdown was announced. Dr. Mahlalela is of the feeling that time for compromises is not there and therefore students just have to exercise “a high rate of responsibility by taking the exercise seriously and avoid always coming up with excuses and complaints at this extra-ordinary time. For instance we have already issued a notice through the Dean’s office to the students through their cellphones. We have instructed those that complain that they left their books at the college and hence cannot study for tests to come forward and collect them. We have told them that we will open the gates for them as it is not all of them that will need to come in.
Avoid
This will, therefore, help us avoid having permitted the converging of more than 20 people in one place as not permissible by the COVID-19 Regulations.” The noise has since subsided especially because it has dawned on the students that it is to their benefit to avoid a situation of having to do the same subjects all over again next without even the prospects of a study loan or any assurance that there would be no ‘Covid -20’.
The same message should be cutting across all tertiary institutions, private or public, that conventional learning alternative modes must be adopted because the time that has already gone to waste in lockdown will never be recovered. The economy is strained and for business to recover and stabilise things up it will only be after lots of sacrifices.
We are very familiar with distance learning or online learning already. Back in the seventies South African private colleges used to make a killing where students received their lessons and sent their scripts via the post office. Those materials were transported by the Breyten bound South African Railways buses that came to also service the migrant miners, emagayiza, who worked the mines in the neighbouring country.
Those who completed the post office degrees were the first to take up lucrative positions in government and the private sector because they read the same books.
While all these interventions are secretly being put in place the country must brace itself to confront mammoth problem of learners who have not been exposed to the privilege of learning either via radio or via WhatsApp or online. Those would be a relatively large cargo of cabbages that society can not wish away.
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