Money made easy with Snapplify and Sticitt Pay

Sticitt, a prepaid payment system for education used by 617 schools in South Africa, have integrated with Snapplify to make payments even easier.

Thousands of schools are already using Snapplify’s solutions to purchase prescribed textbooks (both digital and hardcopy), access free textbooks for teachers, download teaching resources, find professional development courses and build reading skills using an e-library.

Using a Sticitt Pay wallet, accessed through the D6 connect app, users can perform a variety of payments: from school payments, clothing stores and tuck-shop spend, can now add Snapplify purchases to that list. Thanks to the integration, parents and teachers can purchase their school books from Snapplify Engage using Sticitt wallet as a preferred payment option, making textbook acquisition a seamless process.

Use your Sticitt Pay wallet at any Snapplify store or partners integrated with pay to purchase:

With the added pressure of ever-evolving school activities often perpendicularly meeting the demands of life, payments should be frictionless. By expanding their capabilities and partnering with FSPs like Sticitt, Snapplify is hoping to support parents and teachers by reducing financial administration.

Get the full benefit of Snapplify and Sticitt pay – everything you need to teach, learn and collaborate.  For more information, interview requests or image requests, please contact Snapplify on growth@snapplify.com or +27(0)21 975 7192. 

Why technology can be SA education’s great equaliser

By Stefan Botha, CEO of the Optimi Group

Education is a basic human right, enshrined in South Africa’s constitution. And since 1994, government has been working hard to ensure that this is the case, with the biggest share of the country’s National Budget being spent on education every year.

Many of these efforts have paid off. Literacy rates have increased from 82.4% to 95% in 2019, according to data from UNESCO. In 1994, 58% of public-school learners in Grade 12 passed matric, while in 2021 that figure was 76.4%.

But while we have made progress, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on where we can still improve — especially when it comes to digital education.

When the hard lockdown commenced on 26 March 2020, schools across the country temporarily closed, severely interrupting the learning of South Africa’s 13 million schoolgoing learners.

Amid a lack of resources, only 11.7% of schools in our country were able to offer remote learning options, according to a report from Stats SA.

Fast-forward to 2022, and learning seems to be returning to normal, with most schools going back to full-time schedules at the start of this year.

However, the easing of lockdown restrictions and return to normality doesn’t mean we are out of the woods just yet. It is common knowledge that our country’s education system is struggling, with the large inequality gap further exacerbated by the pandemic. Many learners will continue to struggle with their schoolwork and will likely never catch up to their peers in the better resourced schools. 

It is here where I think technology can be deployed to help improve learning outcomes in our schools. Changes in the way we interact with information means that the classroom is just one place where our children will be educated in the 21st Century. If there’s anything that we’ve learnt during the last two years, it’s that technology, digital learning, and the access to information all have a key role to play in reducing inequalities in our education system. Therefore, we need to seek ways to embrace it more.

Closing the digital gap

In 2020, only 7% of households with individuals aged 5–24 had internet access at their homes, according to Stats SA. Moreover, approximately 67.8% of households in South Africa didn’t have access to laptop or desktop computers when the pandemic hit.

When it comes to mobile internet access, the picture is different with up to 66% of households having access to this type of internet. However, mobile broadband has traditionally been expensive in South Africa and therefore limited.

What is encouraging is that government is currently on a drive to auction off spectrum for mobile broadband. Over time, this will hopefully drive down pricing and boost access to internet connectivity, presenting greater opportunities for access to information, including online learning.

It’s clear that we also need to get more devices into the hands of families out there so that learning from anywhere can take place, and this could present opportunities for greater public-private partnerships.

We have experienced the benefits of online learning during the pandemic. It has opened new possibilities in education, and – with the growth of connectivity and improved access to devices – online learning can become a great equaliser in our education system. 

At Optimi, we continue to provide learners from pre-school to adults with the opportunity to learn via digital channels.  And while this journey is one that is still evolving, we are seeing exciting results in terms of improved access to quality education, better learner engagement, and lower cost of providing learning to our clients.

In the 21st Century, this aspect of our lives will only become more important, and there’s no doubt that we as a country can go a long way by focusing more of our energies on improving digital learning.

In the end, this will benefit our society, help reduce inequalities and grow our economy. This is something that we all want as we reflect on Human Rights Day this year.

Asset and textbook management

The EduAssets system is a turn-key solution for proper asset and textbook management for the education industry. The system is locally developed and maintained by Zure Technologies (Pty) Ltd.

As it is cloud based, there is no need for expensive server infrastructure. A smart phone can also double as a barcode scanner by downloading the EduAssets app from the Apple App store or Google Play store. This makes the sytem versatile and cost effective. It can scan any linear or 2D barcodes and will even work seamlessly with RFID tags.

Some highlights of the system are:

  • Straight line value depreciation
  • Cloud based and real time data updates
  • 20 Custom fields
  • Text book management
  • 4 Pictures per book or asset
  • Due date email warnings
  • Export data to Excel
  • Instant reports and filters
  • Unlimited users
  • User rights management
  • Detailed transaction logging
  • Efficient and easy to use
  • Non resource intensive
  • Complete asset count and verification features

Book your free, no obligation demo on the system at EduAssets.co.za

The critical role of support

Let’s start by breaking the two main words in this topic down, crucial and support – both strong words that are critical to creating the best learning experience for all learners.

The Cambridge Dictionary describes crucial as “being synonymous with extremely important or necessary because many other things depend on it”. Looking at support, the Cambridge Dictionary describes it as “to agree with and give encouragement to someone or something because you want him, her, or it to succeed”. Pretty powerful hey? So, imagine launching a learning experience for learners without any guidance, support and encouragement, they would struggle, and the learner uptake would be rather low.

Providing support to learners can be something as simple as a forgotten password or helping them understand a piece of learning content a bit better. Support could range from learner to learner; instructor/educator to learner but also the person managing your e-learning platform, we focus specifically on the role of the educator/instructor and the e-learning platform administrator.

So, how can you best support learners?

Here is a list of some of the solutions that will go a long way to ensuring your learners not only enjoy their learning journeys but will keep coming back for more.

  • Realise that not all learners are the same, they do not all learn in the same way. Structure learning journeys with a bit of everything, having a good balance between text, audio, visual imagery, videos and so on.
  • Make learning journeys as bite-sized as possible, learners take in more and therefore remember more, when given in small bite sizes then having to go through large chunks of information.
  • Ensure timeous feedback on assessed assignments and try as far as possible to make the feedback individualised to the learner.
  • Encourage learners to lean on one another by forming discussion groups and perhaps creating collaborative assignments.
  • Be proactive and reach out to your learners, ensure you respond to their phone calls or emails in a timely manner.
  • When you are providing a solely online course, learners rarely have the opportunity to meet you in a person. So, perhaps include a few instructional videos with you as the admin or educator in them or at least a welcome video so they know who they are dealing with.
  • Reinforce learning along the way but creating short quizzes between content so they can gain the best understanding they can before the final assessment. Memotrainer goes a long way to doing this, reach out to New Leaf Technologies to learn more.

(This article was contributed by New Leaf Technologies, a member of ADESSA).

Optimi – a household name in the education and training industry

Optimi Group is a learning solutions company that offers solutions through four divisions – Home, College, Classroom and Workplace.

Optimi was established when PSG invested in homeschooling provider Impaq (then called Impak) in 2012. Since then, the company has grown by merging and acquiring other education and training businesses that complement its offering, including Media Works, ITSI, CollegeSA, CAMI Education, Tuta-Me, IT Academy, and various smaller learning and content providers. These mergers and acquisitions have provided Optimi with a comprehensive range of resources and skills to deliver world-class learning solutions to its customers.

CAMI and ITSI have been members of ADESSA for a long time, and now their membership is consolidated in Optimi.

Part of the PSG Group, Optimi is quickly becoming a household name in the education and training industry.

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