Forty Three Percent of South African high school learners do not have access to textbooks or academic content; however the majority of these learners do have a feature phone.
Rethink Education, based in South Africa and founded by Storme Magee is a web app which currently provides 10 textbooks worth of Maths and Science content in a single mobile application. The content is CAPS aligned and is designed in an easy to read chat-style format for interactive learning. This learning tool can be used alongside teaching and tutoring. Their teacher dashboard allows teachers and tutors to track their student’s progress and engagement on the platform. Their platform is incredibly data lite (1 chapter uses under 100KB) and does not compete for any storage on students phones.
Douglas Hoernle, co-founder of Rethink Education, got the idea to commence the startup from watching university students engage with chat rooms to ask their fellow students and lecturers questions. He saw how easily a lecturer could respond to fairly difficult problems using an online chat interface.
Digestible content is more appreciated, especially when it comes to mobile phones. This is the main reason Rethink creates content, based on the high school curriculum, that’s easier to interact with.
Rethink chose Mxit as one of its platforms. The average user, of which there are 6.5-million, spends more than 90 minutes a day on the website. This method allows Rethink to reach more students via various devices, as long as they have an internet connection.
Instead of teachers naively relying on tedious handouts to keep students up-to-date and preoccupied, learners can be encouraged to study via the web application. The platform is cloud-based and can be accessed via PC, mobile or tablet.
In 2014, rethink managed to scoop up nearly 400 000 unique visits and has rolled out the product to over fifty schools across the country. The schools who’ve paid for the service range from under resourced ones to those keen on new tech solutions.
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Rethink Education has been the solution for every high school learner when it comes to comprehending Maths and Science. Students have access to material from grade 8 to grade 12. Learners have revolutionized the way they study by learning on the thing they all carry around with them all the time- their phones.
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