Nadaleen Singh

A web-based e-learn­ing app from Ja­maica could soon be help­ing T&T stu­dents.

Called Edu­fo­cal, the pro­gramme is al­ready help­ing Ja­maican stu­dents at the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) and Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) lev­els.

Edu­fo­cal chief ex­ec­u­tive and founder, Gor­don Swa­by said he in­tends to speak to of­fi­cials from the min­istry of ed­u­ca­tion as he plans to launch the pro­gramme in T&T soon.

"Four out of our five GSAT stu­dents were placed in their school of choice and all scored in the nineties. Our top five CSEC stu­dents al­so re­ceived all their pass­es," he said.

The Grade Six Achieve­ment Test (GSAT) is equiv­a­lent to the SEA.

More than 3,500 stu­dents have used the pro­gramme, Swa­by said.

Swa­by spoke to the Guardian while he was in T&T as a Ja­maican del­e­gate for the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed 8th Amer­i­c­as Com­pet­i­tive­ness Fo­rum in Port-of-Spain.

He said the on­line so­cial learn­ing plat­form's ap­proach to teach­ing is in­ter­ac­tive and not over­ly struc­tured, so that stu­dents find learn­ing to be fun.

In Ja­maica, the pro­gramme has a month­ly sub­scrip­tion rate of US$15 per stu­dent, or US$42 per stu­dent for three months.

Sub­scribers log­ging in­to Edu­Fo­cal's pass­word-ac­cess web­site can do tests in their sub­ject ar­eas and track their over­all per­for­mance.

"Stu­dents and par­ents can track their progress on Edu­fo­cal. You can see the ar­eas that you are lack­ing in, you can see the ar­eas that you are pro­gress­ing in. How much time you are spend­ing on the pro­gram and the ar­eas that you are spend­ing the time on," said.

About Gor­don Swa­by

At 15, Swa­by cre­at­ed one of the largest gam­ing sites in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, the now de­funct ad­vancegamers.com.

In 2012, Swa­by was recog­nised by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy as the top stu­dent en­tre­pre­neur. He is al­so a Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Ja­maica (PSOJ) 50un­der50 awardee, and has re­ceived the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al Youth Achieve­ment Award and Com­mon­wealth Youth Award for ex­cel­lence in de­vel­op­ment work. He was one of 10 young re­gion­al in­no­va­tors in­vit­ed to at­tend the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank's board of gov­er­nors meet­ing in March in Bahia, Brazil.