SmartTerm, a cohesive web and mobile learning management system, aims to reinvent education in the Caribbean by providing school administrations and students with a seamless, integrated experience.
The platform, a brainchild of Jamaicans Shamir Saddler and Stuart Crooks, has been gaining traction across the region – as many schools seek to explore SmartTerm’s streamlined efficiency. The duo make up two of six members – Jamaicans Jomo Haldane, Sean Wilkinson and Theon O’Connor as well as Trinidadian Jayme Hoyte.
“Three years ago Shamir came to me with the idea after experiencing the school system in the United States and we thought of creating a tool for schools to implement in the Caribbean,” said Stuart Crooks, who is Chief Operating Officer for the latest innovation in Learning Management Systems (LMS).
“In using SmartTerm, school administrators, teachers, students and parents will increase their efficiency; providing everyone with a seamless integrated experience,” he said.
SmartTerm Features
Backed by Amazon Web Services (AWS), SmartTerm has four main features, aimed at reducing the paper load and workloads of schools in the Caribbean: e-Learning and Mobile Learning; Account Management; Customised Branding and School Webpage Hosting; and Analytics & Online Reports are all part of the wider SmartTerm product – and comes after years of research into what is being used in the Caribbean today.
“Based on our research, there’s a lot that the Caribbean lacks compared to other regions of the world. The world is going further and faster into digital technology, and we think SmartTerm will be the way forward for education in schools for the future,” said Mr. Wilkinson, Chief Technology Officer at SmartTerm.
For school administrators, SmartTerm will remove the need for paper, manual systems and storage; securely storing data and backing it up to a cloud system.
Teachers can share assignments, upload syllabi, create discussion boards and teach via video conferencing, while students retrieve the information, receive updates and complete assignments online.
SmartTerm can track all student, teacher and administrator accounts. Immunisations, account balances, attendance, discipline, grades, events, notifications and more are possible through the platform.
“In summary, SmartTerm was created to increase efficiency in schools, getting the Caribbean region as a whole more involved with technology and lessening the manual burden of the administrative side of the education sector,” Mr Crooks explained.
So far, most schools have lauded the initiative, however, the unavailability of Internet access in the Caribbean might pose some challenge to the SmartTerm team and schools by extension.
“It’s been positive feedback. These schools want to know more and are willing to use SmartTerm; however, there is an issue with the lack of accessibility to computers and the Internet; but for the most part at least 90% of the schools we’re in talks with are very excited about the product,” said Mr. Haldane, Chief Research Officer at SmartTerm.