Some private schools in Lafia, Nasarawa State have begun e-learning programmes to engage their students academically following the lockdown occasioned by the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Speaking in separate interviews with a correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Lafia, the schools owners said they adopted the e-learning methods to engage their students academically inorder to keep their minds off social vices due to idleness.
They explained that the e-learning platform provide opportunity for teaching, assigning of home work to the students and marking of their scripts.
They said that the e-learning programme is of no cost to parents and guardians.
Mrs Ima Abasi-Brown, Proprietress of You-Nik Primary and Secondary Schools, Lafia, said that the school adopted the e-learning method to close the gap and avert the danger associated with disconnecting a child from academic activities for a long time.
She said that lessons were been delivered with assignment and questions been sent to the students through the e-learning platform.
Abasi-Brown said: “there are different applications online, but we are using Google Classroom and Zoom apps for our e-learning and there are effective so far.
“With the google classroom, we send and get back the activities, then mark and send back to the children.
“The Zoom application on the other hand has video conference call where they get to see their teachers write as they teach them.”
She said that the students and their parents were very excited at the new method, saying it had helped to keep them busy.
She, however, identified the challenges of the programme to include financial constraints on parents to buy data and poor electricity supply.
Similarly, Mrs Grace Adigizi, Proprietress of Royal Scholar School, Lafia, said the school has adopted e-learning in an efforts to keep the kids busy.
Mrs Adigizi said they use the Zoom application, a video conferencing App with the capacity to accommodate over 200 participants at a time.
“We send the link to the parents to enable them join the class and ask them for their convenient time as some of them are essential workers during this period of COVID-19 pandemic.
“So, we do it at different times based on the time the parents agree upon.
“The kids are also excited to see their teachers and their mates and friends, even though its not like the normal classroom situation.
“Also, most parents are not familiar with the application and not all parents have the device or even the data to access the classes, so, it is a little bit challenging,” Adigizi added.
