
It’s been exactly 2 months since we at Gray Matters Capital started our ‘Technologies for School Resilience’ blog and mailer series. The aim of the 15 blog posts published was to help the low cost private schools and their ecosystem of teachers, parents and schools to get acquainted with some of the free-to-use technology tools, platforms, apps and other educational resources recommended by us.
While there were many lists of such education technology solutions floating around in media listicles across different countries and recommended by organizations such as the UNESCO; the reality is that such lists can be at best overwhelming for some and confusing for many.
These lists had recommendations of solutions, which were indeed helpful to students from a content standpoint but were supplemental in nature. Meaning, while such solutions facilitated education continuity for students, the schools couldn’t add value or justify school fees or rake in new admissions based on recommending them to their students.
Our blogs have filtered such lists and done a deep-dive into those solutions which were not just free-to-use or easy to adapt by school leaders, principals and teachers, but also most relevant for the low cost private schools that we and our portfolio companies cater to.
Our recommendations of curated education technology solutions have served more as a ‘How-To’ guide to our school ecosystem, aiding them in their endeavour to survive and continue imparting quality education through engaging means by taking their classes online amid the COVID-19 induced school closures.
The solutions we have suggested thus far and links to their respective blog posts are listed below:
Recommended Solutions for Remote Schooling |
Utility |
Blog Link |
Zoom
Microsoft Teams |
Video Conferencing | Live Classes via Zoom
Microsoft Teams – An Alternative to Zoom for Schools Conducting Virtual Classes
|
Google Classroom Edmodo |
Digital Learning Management System (LMS)
|
Digital LMS Platforms for Low Cost Private Schools
|
Adobe Scan |
Digitizing Class Material |
Tools to Convert Class Material from Physical to Digital
|
Google Slides Pear Deck |
Preparing Engaging Content for Virtual Classes |
Upping the Engagement Quotient of Virtual Classes | Part 1 – Google Slides & Pear Deck
|
Quizizz |
Gamified Class Assessments |
Upping the Engagement Quotient of Virtual Classes | Part 2 – Quizizz
|
Education channels on DTH TV and Radio |
Education for Students without internet and mobile device |
Broadcast the New EdTech? Part 1: Non-Internet based Technologies for School Continuity
|
SMS, Toll Free numbers and Missed Call facility |
Education for Students with basic mobile device |
|
|
Sharing class material via messaging apps |
What makes WhatsApp the preferred medium of choice for School Continuity?
|
Meghshala
ChalkLit tickLinks Firki |
Teacher capacity building & Professional Development
Access to ready-made digital content teachers can use in virtual classes |
Online Curriculum-based Resources that Teachers can use for Virtual Classes |
Khan Academy |
Online Curriculum based Videos
|
How Teachers can make the most of Khan Academy for Remote Learning |
Edpuzzle |
Customizing education videos from YouTube and Khan Academy with teacher’s voice and assessments | |
Chrome extensions:
· Screencastify · Tab Resize · Editor for Docs, Sheets and Slides |
For teachers to create and share videos | Screencastify and Other Chrome Extensions for Teachers conducting Virtual Classes |
In addition to these recommended technologies, we also issued guidelines for schools to adopt on areas such as sanitation, operations, communications and social distancing, to prepare them for reopening [Read: Sanitation Guidelines for Schools Re-Opening in a post COVID-19 World]
Feedback, be it in the form of surveys [Read: Are Nigeria’s Low Cost Private Schools ready for Remote Schooling?] and also from school leaders and parents have guided the choice of topics and educational technology tools recommendations we have given. Going forward, we will continue to be receptive to such feedback to make our recommendations more relevant.
Importance of an Integrated School Management System
What has been missing in our list of recommendations above is a School Management System. There’d hardly be any school today operating without a School Management ERP solution, as manual database management can be quite cumbersome and ineffective.
While there are disparate solutions for managing admissions, tracking and facilitating fees collection and managing academic, administrative and operational aspects of a school, having these functionalities integrated into one seamless platform is of the essence. More so, in a post COVID-19 world.
With no certainty of schools reopening even in the month of July, experiments of schools reopening being mixed [Read: Spike in Coronavirus Cases Causes Hundreds of Schools in South Korea to Close After Reopening] and parents apprehensive of sending their children to school [Read: ‘My Child Can Lose a School Year, But I Don’t Want Her To Lose Her Life’], one thing that’s certain is that going online is the only option for schools to sustain themselves from a commercial standpoint.
Questions that Schools need to find answers to
- Do the benefits accrued to your school in owing a School Management System outweigh the cost in this current phase of COVID-19 induced school closure?
- Does your existing School Management System come integrated with a Learning Management System that can help teachers to continue imparting education online?
- Does your existing School Management System enable your school to keep a track of online class schedules conducted by different teachers across all the grades and sections?
- Are records such as attendance, marks obtained and fee collection updated digitally without manual intervention?
- Does your existing School Management System enable you to track fee collections and facilitate fees collection as well as manage the admissions process online?
- Does your existing School Management System give you a real-time update on your school’s finances (fee receipts v/s vendor payments), class status, examination performance etc. with insightful reports that can be availed in a click?
- Has your school adopted a centralized communication framework to send customized, individualized messages such as school updates, test notices, grades secured etc. to students and their parents (via Email/ SMS), instead of disseminating it through teachers via WhatsApp groups ?
If the answers to majority of the questions are a ‘NO’, then it’s a high time your school shifts to a School Management System that helps you answer them in the affirmative.

Keep track of our future blogs as we move beyond school resilience to cover educational platforms, apps and services that can help your school’s efforts towards improving quality of learning outcomes.