The planet was engulfed by the Coronavirus in the worldwide disaster. Recently, many governments worldwide have been shutting down schools for a prolonged time.
Schools were shut down in Sindh until 13 March, after the first confirmed case in Karachi, when the government dealt with the outbreak of the disease.
While the precautionary measures taken by Pakistan have been lauded by the World Health Organization as necessary, students in Pakistan cannot afford to be out-of-school for prolonged periods.
WHO representative in Pakistan Dr. Palitha Mahipala told reporters he was “impressed by the swift and diligent way the government has handled the crisis so far and WHO is committed to support them every step of the way.”
Educators in Pakistan have sought alternate methods with attempts to control the outbreak that was required to prevent the learning from stopping with fears of the coronavirus.
One such platform has been developed by Mera Sabaq, a multi-award winning EdTech company on a mission to help children in Pakistan to pursue primary education.
Muse, SABAQ’s flagship product, is a K-5, digital learning application that improves student engagement and learning outcomes for Math, Science, English, and Urdu. It is designed to be engaging and interactive, includes animated video lessons, interactive and gamified assessments, and story-based instructional content. The application offers curriculum in Urdu, Sindhi and English.
When asked about Muse’s resourcefulness during the current school closure, Ms. Maha Adil, an Assessment Associate at Mera Sabaq highlighted the app’s reach and importance.
“Back in my school days when institutions were forced to shut down, we didn’t have accessible resources readily available to fall back on, to continue learning. That isn’t the case anymore. Currently, Muse is being used by over a thousand schools across Pakistan where over 120,000 kids use Muse to improve learning outcomes.”
The numbers are set to grow with schools being shutdown in Sindh as the app makes the national curriculum available for free to all on the Play Store and App Store.
Another such method has been opted by one of the top private schools in Karachi, Cedar College, where virtual classrooms have been set up by educators in a bid to not waste crucial time before the Cambridge A’level Examinations.
Cedar’s administration went a step further in offering assistance to any other institution in setting up a virtual classroom.
“We understand that many institutions and private teachers are still trying to figure out a strategy to tackle this problem. We would like to offer our assistance to anyone who would like to set up virtual classroom(s) for their students so that they can continue to teach. Regardless of institution, we all need to focus on ensuring that our students’ academic progress is not impacted by this unfortunate and unforeseen situation – the students and their academic and physical well-being must come first”, wrote the school’s official page on Facebook.
“Okay Google, Take Me To Class”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that in a bid to help bridge the gap between educators and students, Google would roll-out free access to Google’s advanced Handout Video-Conferencing capabilities.
“We want to help businesses and schools impacted by COVID-19 stay connected: starting this week, we’ll roll out free access to our advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities through July 1, 2020 to all G Suite customers globally”, Pichai wrote on Twitter.
We want to help businesses and schools impacted by COVID-19 stay connected: starting this week, we’ll roll out free access to our advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities through July 1, 2020 to all G Suite customers globally. https://t.co/OWWF7s5jjR
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) March 3, 2020
