A web-based e-learning app from Jamaica could soon be helping T&T students.
Called Edufocal, the programme is already helping Jamaican students at the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) and Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) levels.
Edufocal chief executive and founder, Gordon Swaby said he intends to speak to officials from the ministry of education as he plans to launch the programme in T&T soon.
“Four out of our five GSAT students were placed in their school of choice and all scored in the nineties. Our top five CSEC students also received all their passes,” he said.
The Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) is equivalent to the SEA.
More than 3,500 students have used the programme, Swaby said.
Swaby spoke to the Guardian while he was in T&T as a Jamaican delegate for the recently concluded 8th Americas Competitiveness Forum in Port-of-Spain.
He said the online social learning platform’s approach to teaching is interactive and not overly structured, so that students find learning to be fun.
In Jamaica, the programme has a monthly subscription rate of US$15 per student, or US$42 per student for three months.
Subscribers logging into EduFocal’s password-access website can do tests in their subject areas and track their overall performance.
“Students and parents can track their progress on Edufocal. You can see the areas that you are lacking in, you can see the areas that you are progressing in. How much time you are spending on the program and the areas that you are spending the time on,” said.
About Gordon Swaby
At 15, Swaby created one of the largest gaming sites in the English-speaking Caribbean, the now defunct advancegamers.com.
In 2012, Swaby was recognised by the University of Technology as the top student entrepreneur. He is also a Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) 50under50 awardee, and has received the Governor-General Youth Achievement Award and Commonwealth Youth Award for excellence in development work. He was one of 10 young regional innovators invited to attend the Inter-American Development Bank's board of governors meeting in March in Bahia, Brazil.