Education Minister Octavia Alfred said many students and teachers in Dominica are now connected to the online learning initiative put in place by the education ministry. She said only six primary schools are yet to be connected to the platform and that all the secondary schools on the island are now connected. She said students who do not have internet access or mobile devices will activity sheets for academic assignments and assessment.
Learning is continuing through online platforms and teachers are engaged in the preparation of activity packs for their students. To facilitate this, the ministry has asked principles to use management discretion and ask teachers to report to schools on specific days to prepare work for students.
Octavia Alfred: Minister for Education
Using Google Classroom and Zoom – two video conferencing tools which have recorded significant usage worldwide since the advent of COVID-19 – Alfred said thousands of students can now access uninterrupted academic progress from the comfort of their homes. She disclosed that more than 3,500 classrooms have been created at the end of the second term and that over 2,000 assignments have been posted for students’ use.
“Five thousand five hundred students have access and presently 645 teachers are connected to the Ministry of Education Resource Training Classroom,” Alfred stated. “The resource classroom is a common online area where education officers and teachers congregate to share information resources and content to facilitate online learning.”
Students of the Achievement Learning Center (ALC) have also keyed into the online learning resource provided by administrators for them. The ALC caters primarily for students with disabilities, with teachers saying the students have been gaining a lot in their online learning experience. The teachers said the experience differs from the normal classroom setting, but the challenged students have been tasking themselves to adapt and the response so far have been encouraging.
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