With CellSchool Mxit flexes its muscles as an online teaching platform

Despite the recent turmoil at Mxit, it’s good to see the instant messaging service continuing to attract interest from companies involved in South Africa’s education sector. A free revision series designed to help this year’s Matrics ace their exams, has been developed on the Mxit platform.

‘CellSchool’, created by the EISH-Team in partnership with the Digital Media and Marketing Agency (DMMA), consists of short video lessons for six key subjects that guide Grade 12s through what they need to study to succeed in their final exams.

With forty 10- to 15-minute lessons for Maths, Physical Sciences, Life Sciences and English FAL, and twenty each for Maths Literacy and Accounting, the revision series covers key concepts in the Grade 12 curriculum.

CellSchool tutors are available on MXit from 5PM to 7PM every day to help learners with their revision questions. They also guide learners through practice activities and questions from past exam papers, ensuring that they are able to engage with the content in the video lessons, practise until they have mastered it and then apply the knowledge in an examination context.

“It is a way of showing learners the efficiency of various digital media channels in education when it comes to transforming education,” says Anastacia Martin, Head of DMMA Training and Transformation.

During the exam period itself, ‘night-before’ guidelines for each exam paper will also be provided on MXit – including advice on what to expect in the following day’s exam, how best to approach each section, and how to ensure maximum marks.

“We’ve been experimenting with mobile as a way of delivering good quality video lessons to learners at a very low cost,” says EISH-team content producer Lisa Blakeway, “and it seemed silly not to make the pilot content available to the people who will benefit from it most – this year’s Grade 12s.

According to Blakeway, the series has been shot specifically with inexpensive, small-screen cell phones in mind. The videos have been compressed so that the associated data costs are as low as possible for the end user — approximately 20c for a 5-minute/2MB lesson segment.

To access CellSchool on Mxit go to Tradepost, go to Mxit Reach, go to Education and then to CellSchool. For the full Mxit matric revision schedule check out Study Mate.

Mxit is increasingly being used to boost South Africa’s education system. We recently reported on local startup, Siyavula, that is also making use of Mxit to distribute its South African curriculum aligned textbooks under an Open Copyright license.