Halifax Company Providing Online Learning Material For Free
HALIFAX – With schools closed all around the world, parents and teachers everywhere are worried about their children falling behind their studies, with no guarantee of when the classroom doors may open again. But a Halifax-based online learning company has decided to help fill the void by offering its services for free this spring.
“When they started to close the schools, we got flooded with messages from teachers and from kids and parents who wanted to get a hold of the material we had,” said Binogi CEO Linus Gunnarson.
“We took a somewhat bold decision that we would release all content during this (pandemic) for free.”
Binogi has more than 1,000 education videos and quizzes for grades 6-9 and has material for different curriculums around the world. The company has its main headquarters in Sweden, but last fall set up a Canadian office in Halifax. Gunnarson said he liked Halifax as a location because of the provincial digital animation tax credit, and the recruitment opportunities in the city.
“In Halifax, there are so many universities focussing on programmers, so it’s so much easier to find talent in Halifax then it is [in Sweden],” said Gunnarson. “Now, we have moved personnel from Europe, as well as recruiting in Halifax.”
After schools began closing worldwide due to the coronavirus pandemic, Binogi began seeing a huge jump in users, which gave Gunnarson the indication that online learning is needed now more than ever.
“It’s crazy; they want it and they are signing up. We have an extreme spike at the moment,” said Gunnarson. “We hope that they will stay there because they will realize how much they learn and how much the kids are being supported by the system.”
While it’s great that parents and children can access Binogi’s learning platform for free, Gunnarson is hoping that governments will allow teachers and schools to access the material. He says the company already had discussions with Nova Scotia’s Department of Education.
“The kids and the parents can obviously use this from home…but for the school to use us they need approval from the department of education – and that takes time,” said Gunnarson.
“But the education system is not ready, and they are the gatekeepers for releasing material like ours.”
This past Monday, the Nova Scotia government announced that public schools will remain closed until at least May 1. In a press release, the government said online learning resources would be available.
“Students and families will have access to e-learning and at-home learning materials will be provided for students without internet access. Families who feel at-home learning may be a burden are asked to speak to their child’s teacher,” states the press release.
In an email to Huddle, the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development confirmed that it is working with Binogi on an online learning program.
“We are looking at multiple options and partnerships to enhance online learning opportunities. The Department has been working with Binogi and continues to do so,” said a department spokesperson in the e-mail.
James Cummins, a retired education professor at the University of Toronto, has reviewed some of the content available at Binogi. He thinks the company has done well to make the online material accessible to children, by using a mixture of animated video and audio clips.
“It makes content available in a much more easily managed and attractive format than a typical textbook might,” said Cummins. “I think it’s a game-changer compared to what we had before.”
Cummins also gives credit to Binogi for providing material in a lot of languages spoken by refugees, making learning a lot easier for these children under challenging circumstances.
“A student who just arrived in Sweden, or Canada…can get access to the content in their own language. While they’re learning the school language, it helps them to keep up with content like math and science; nothing like that has ever been done before,” said Cummins.
The COVID-19 outbreak has shone a spotlight on public education’s lack of online learning tools. Cummins says there have been a lot of challenges with implementing this technology into the school system. One of the biggest challenges involves the curriculum simply not being available in digital formats to students.
“There’s a lot of wishful thinking that you can just snap your fingers and students can take courses online. But the infrastructure isn’t there and the content isn’t there,” he said.
Another major hurdle is not every student has computer or internet access at home, although Cummins believes that problem isn’t as big as it was just a decade ago.
“A lot of students coming from low-income backgrounds don’t have access to computers at home. It wasn’t really feasible to implement online learning that students could tap into at home.”
“But most students now have access to cellphones…I think we are now in a position to take advantage of technological developments in a way that we weren’t five or ten years ago.”