The educational system in Cyprus has been entered into an unprecedented era, where it is required to shift into new ways of teaching. Students have now started attending classes through some e-learning platforms (such as Microsoft Teams) enabling teachers and students to interact together.
On this occasion, a question arises: Is it now the time for the educational system in Cyprus to go one step further and develop its own platform?
A new startup that empowers the automation of educational systems with new technology where teachers, parents and students will have a high quality user experience. E-school-Cyprus educational platform aims to kick-off this November 2020 for beta testing and aims to be the first educational startup in Cyprus who will bring all the high school communities into one, improving the education in Cyprus and empowering stage of the art technology to be used with hopefully resulting in better grades for students and a better collaboration between the parents and teachers of each school.
The website that has been developed enables teachers to input data and keep a track on students' performance (i.e. grades and participation in the class during each semester), behaviour, weaknesses and strengths. The modification (edit/delete) is only available to the academic staff in the subject that they teach. However, they can have a read only view to the whole report of each student. In addition, teachers can see some important information that may be required to know for each student. This helps them to evaluate and act accordingly in each student’s case.
Through this website, students also have access to their records and their feedback is displayed in a functional Graphical User Interface. Hence, they are aware of their performance throughout the academic period. Also, in the cases where they need further assistance, they students are able to complete extra online activities and tests assigned by their teacher, in order to improve their skills in the areas of weakness.
Once this happens in Cyprus, not matter the type of the high schools private or not, they will start to have an effective management of their schools, less paper work, and more automation while making it easy to navigate since all the design was made to be user friendly, meaning not much training will be needed because of the simplicity of the E-School-Cyprus web platform.
A useful feature that should be implemented to the website’s development is the graphical and numerical output on test and exam results that will be published in each student’s profile accordingly. The data of the tests and results will be stored and in combination with the above mentioned features, the system should give the option to the academic staff to identify student’s strongest and weakest areas - even in regards to their behaviour - that needs to be improved.
Again the above mentioned feature, promotes the stage of the art technologies the platform of E-School-Cyprus will provide from November 2020, to possibly all the high schools in Cyprus starting from Limassol where the headquarters of this education platform are based.
Another feature that should be implemented is the additional support, guidance and activities that will be offered to help the student to be improved.
In addition to the above, a useful feature that could be developed and implemented is to make available to the academic staff to view the feedback that other co-workers have added in regards to their subject for each student, in order to have a more holistic view for each child.
Another feature that could be added in the website is the option of alerting and updating the staff by an automatic email when a new post is made by a co-worker in the report of a mutual student. The recording of a student's attendance in the class should be indicated in a calendar, as well as the deadline dates that a student has in a subject.
In addition, the originality that is going to be provided by this platform, not only is going to leave an impact in educational system of Cyprus, and their developers are already planning ahead for some major features. Soon to be added is the automation of each high school kids transport to and from, and with a new update after November, E-School-Cyprus might enable SMS feature for both the teachers to be notified about school events, but also students and parents.
This new educational startup is launching next month and we should expect a big update in the school sector in Cyprus.
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