Every job comes with its intrigues and new perspectives that leave us more knowledgeable, sometimes tickled, at times lost, but mostly inquisitive on what solutions would best suit different human issues, that rear ugly faces, almost all the time. Being in an EdTech company has exposed us to a litany of experiences that leave us mostly intrigued, but more importantly challenged to go the extra mile for our schools, our teachers, our education, and the whole system altogether.
Think of it this way. The creative you come up with an idea to develop a solution for CBC teachers after a brief encounter with what CBC is to a teacher, and an innate desire to innovate solutions to our ever-present life. Being the tech that you are, you get down to the business of making the idea logical and helpful eventually. As recommended, you do due diligence or if you like, needed research to guide you on your product through a system survey, crisscross the country to understand different needs by doing a needs analysis, after which you then, gather all the necessary tools and begin on a robust product, that is needed through design. You then set out and within months of hard work, you have a great system that covers every aspect of the CBC curriculum, that you implement and test, as you continuously change and work towards the maintenance of the system.
Your goal is to have as many schools adopt the product that will help the teachers reduce their workload, and manage their work, which then leaves them with extra time to help learners in achieving their learning outcomes, and for themselves too, by getting ample time to concentrate not only on their well-being but also seek self-improvement and empowerment. Sure enough, the teachers, the administration, and the whole school are over the moon and excitedly adopt the system as part of their practice.
Over and over, the teachers own the system and give feedback in droves, on how best the system should be improved to wholesomely capture every bit of CBC teaching and assessment. The suggestions vary, from the curriculum design to the functionality of the system and their access and usage. That, in a nutshell, is the ultimate beauty of innovation. It’s in its implementation, adoption, and helpful feedback to continuously iterate and improve the system to perfection, that acts as a motivation for then and years to come.
That has been our journey and every day is an opportunity for more.
During the feedback session, teachers tell stories of the many innovators who have walked into their schools with many systems for schools that fail as soon as they get in. They even show you abandoned machines, dusty rooms, broken gadgets, rusty networking equipment, and everything else. Then they narrate stories of how they were disrupted and ‘trained’ only for the systems to fail, and the owners to abandon them years or even months after hyped launches. You feel their hesitation, hidden in genuine assurances of their desire to work with you for a long time. Their desire to adopt and keep for a long time. Their desire to completely shift from their old methods to the digital space. Some even go to the extent of enquiring where you are located, for walk-ins, in case your system breaks down.
At that moment, a million thoughts fill your mind on why you should not fail as an innovator. Why your system must keep going no matter the challenges. You wish to reach out to the other innovators and have a sit-down, to understand, pitifully so, why they abandoned their course. You wish you can walk into the education offices and have a conversation on ways in which all innovators in the education space can be brought together, be supported to deliver, without fail. You wish to write letters to all organizations that sponsor the innovators and just plead with them to evaluate the impact and the potential these innovations encompass for our schools. You envision how great it would be to have all that harnessed and integrated for efficiency.
In fact, if the conversation is anything to go by, schools and teachers desire as many innovations as possible, that would literally revolutionize the whole education ecosystem. An integrated version of systems that move them from point A to point Z without any breakages and complexities thereof, but a smooth shift from one interface to the next. Like a one-stop shop for everything that is a teacher, a school, a ministry, a child, a parent, a high school, a university, a library, a dining card, a clocking system, a salary follow-up channel, an opportunity pool for upskilling and everything else that revolves around teaching, learning, and education as a whole.
We believe that nothing is impossible, and with the trajectory exhibited during this time and era, when it comes to digitalizing processes for schools and in our education system, we need a collaborative approach, one that will oversee a teacher-based, functional integrated system, once and for all. A chance for us all to join hands, and work together towards revolutionizing our education sector, completely.
