Five Top Edu-Tech Web-based Solutions for Gilgit-Baltistan’s students

Shueb Sultan
Educationist

We have been witnessing that the prevailing situations  caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has affected education and the continuity of learning, with all public and private sector education institutions across Pakistan since march 2020. The closure of education institutions due to COVID-19 has directly affected 40 million school-going learners from pre-primary and primary to higher secondary levels in the country. The continued closure of education institutions means the loss of learning for children that will further widen the gap between the expected years of schooling and learning adjusted years of schooling and will potentially increase dropout rates and therefore the number of out of school children. The situation calls parents, teachers and educational organizations to work closely for continued learning of students at homes at any point without any further compromise.  Analyzing current students’ learning needs the following possible Educational Technology solutions are proposed for the parents, teachers, students and educational organizations of Gilgit-Baltistan. 

1. Khan Academy

The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization that provides free video tutorials and interactive exercises. The Academy’s declared mission is “changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere.”

Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard that empower learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom. It focuses on skill mastery to help learners establish strong foundations, so there is no limit to what they can learn next. In the times of covid-19, this websites is most reliable and working solution for the school and college students of Gilgit-Baltistan who can easily understand English Medium Instructions.

Official Website: https://www.khanacademy.org/

2. Sabaq.Pk

DescriptionSabaq.pk or Sabaq Foundation is a non-profit trust providing free online video lectures for students from classes K – 14 for all education boards of Pakistan including FBISE, Sindh Board, KP Board, and Baluchistan Board as well as for Cambridge. The organization has a team of qualified teachers working their best to create easy to understand videos for students providing 14,000 + free lectures for subjects including Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology, English, General Science, Computer Science, General Math, Statistics and Accounting.  Sabaq.pk also provides study material for MCAT and ECAT in the form of video lectures.  The videos content available on this website is bilingual and it is most suitable for all the school and college level students of GB for self and individual learning.

Official Website: www.sabaq.pk

3. Learn Smart Pakistan

Learn Smart Pakistan provides Video Lessons, Games & Assessments to help you improve your knowledge and results. Get a solid and stronger understanding of your concepts in English, Mathematics and Science by using our personalized learning plans. The website is appropriate for all the school level students of GB for self and individual learning.

Official Website: www.Learnsmartpakistan.org

4. Academic Earth

Academic Earth is a website launched on March 24, 2009, by Richard Ludlow and co-founders Chris Bruner and Liam Pisano which offers free online video courses and academic lectures from the world’s top universities such as UC Berkeley, UCLA, University of Michigan, University of Oxford, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale. It is considered a search engine for full-text scholarly information, with video courses covering around 50 primary subject disciplines  ranging from Arts and Design, Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, Engineering, English, Entrepreneurship, History, Humanities, Law, Mathematics, Medicine, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, and Statistics. The website is a good Edu-tech solution for college and university level students for self and individual learning.

Official Website: https://academicearth.org/

5. edX.org

edX is a non-profit, massive open online course (MOOC) provider created by Harvard and MIT. It partners with the world’s leading universities and organizations to offer high-quality online courses to learners across the world. It hosts online university-level courses in a wide range of disciplines to a worldwide student body, including some courses at no charge. It also conducts research into learning based on how people use its platform. edX is a nonprofit organization and runs on the free Open edX open-source software platform.

More than 140 schools, nonprofit organizations, and corporations offer or plan to offer courses on the edX website.  At edX, the Verified Certificates are optional for most MOOCs (for a fee) once you complete the course. Your identity will be verified digitally. edX offers additional MicroMasters Credentials. With MicroMasters, some online courses can be credited towards an academic master’s degree at certain universities.

This website is another good Edu-tech solution for college and university level students and professional for self and individual learning.

 Official Website: https://www.edx.org/