onlinelearning

Owner of United Station Services Henry Dean is doing his part to ensure every child in the country as a tablet for the continuation of online learning, as schools remain physically closed.

He presented the Ministry of Education with 80 tablets for the T.G Glover Primary School.

Dean lives in the neighborhood and wanted to assist the children in his community.

“I owe this to T.G. Glover.

“T.G. Glover is personal and profound to us because we live here. I believe that a good number of students who attend T.G. Glover come from the surrounding area. It would be foolish of us not to pay attention to what’s next door. We want to encourage, enhance, support those in the neighborhood academically but it goes beyond that.

“My presence and involvement bring respectability to the environment. We want to continue to build that kind of reputation,” Dean said.

Education Minister Jeff Lloyd expressed his gratitude to Dean for the donation.

“We will not stop until every student, every educator has a device in his/her hand.
By the end of this year, we expect to achieve that. We expect that the 46,000
students in the public school and the 45,000 educators, administrators, teachers
will have an appropriate device capacitated to deal with online learning,” Lloyd said.

Dean said he has provided education for his children and wished for other children to have the same opportunity.

“I know what the value of education is. I have invested in it and seen it produce. My
children have succeeded, but they can’t be the only ones to succeed. This would
be a troubled society for all of us.”

United Sanitation Services is the oldest private garbage collection company in New Providence.

(BIS photo/Derek Smith)

It was back-to-school for thousands of students, but they encountered connectivity issues with the Ministry of Education’s online learning portal, on their first day.

As teachers and students attempted to sign in, they were greeted with a sign that read, “Undergoing maintenance. Thank you for being patient. We’re doing some work on the site and will be back shortly.”

As of three o’clock, the end of a school day, the ministry had not yet issued a notice or press release informing users of the connectivity issues.

Complaints flood in

Parents took to social media to vent their frustration, as they chronicled the agony of signing on their children for the first day of school.

Monica Sawyer said, “Mr. Minister, this ain’t working.”

Dedrie Hamilton who has three school-aged children said, ” I have three kids in school–grades 12, 10 and 5. No luck with MOE. It’s really frustrating.”

And Adreanna Martin said, “I been trying to get on, still nothing is happening.”

Teachers resort to Zoom

Anticipating issues with the new online portal, the Redcross Center for the Deaf used the Zoom platform to engage its students.

The school tested the platform last week for its students and decided to continue its use for the month of October.

A teacher who wanted to remain anonymous said her school did not get an update from the ministry on the use of the online virtual portal nor did teachers receive training on its use, so her school resorted to Zoom, a tried and true platform that has arisen in popularity since the onset of the pandemic.

Ministry says it will fix the problem

When CSJ Report called the ministry, a secretary said technicians were working to rectify the problem. She said her office has been bombarded with calls from concern parents were trying to log on but were unable to do so. The secretary said teachers have uploaded assignments to the portal but students are unable to access them due to an issue “on our side.” The issue is expected to be addressed by Thursday morning.