Following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement of the national Covid-19 lockdown in South Africa earlier last year, the need for new ways of teaching and learning became eminent with technology being the critical requirement and enabler of teaching and learning in an environment that discourages physical contact.
To ensure that the principles of social distancing and that the lockdown regulations are adhered to in order to avert the negative public health effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ms Zora, an artificial intelligence-based educational platform, which is a product of Africa Teen Geeks, offered remote learning classes live from March 2020 across all grades to ensure learning and teaching continuity in the midst of the pandemic.
Since its inception, Africa Teen Geeks has grown to become the largest computer science non-profit organizations in Africa. Their mission ‘to equalize access to quality education’ has grown in the face of Covid-19 crisis. “We have quickly expanded our work to aid African children affected by school closures,” said the NPO.
The contribution and achievement of the programme are as follows:
Over 500,000 stakeholders reached through Zoom live lessons
Over 470,000 views on our YouTube channel
Completed coding and robotics curriculum in partnership with the Department of Basic Education
Created 6,000 video lessons for Grades R to 12
Created the first African block-based coding platform Ms Zora Block and created tutorials for both learners and teachers with an objective of ensuring that every African school can teach coding from foundation phase in their mother tongue.
The reintroduction of lockdown alert Level 3 by the president on 28 December 2020 is suggesting that remote learning and teaching will remain an order of the day even in the year 2021 of the pandemic. In partnership with Apodytes and Unicef South Africa Africa, Teen Geeks (ATG) has amplified its programme. The NPO will be continuing with coding and robotics classes from 4 to 22 January 2021. These Classes will be conducted virtually in Zoom, our Ms Zora platform and YouTube channel.
