Education apps on Mxit – “Africa’s largest social network” – were popular for the period leading up to the start of South African Grade 12 exams on Monday.
Mxit today released a report that shows that educational apps on the social network had surpassed the 5 million subscriptions level, with exam revision apps that help learners with their end-year exams proving popular.
The social network hosts eight exam revision apps for South African scholars, and in total these apps approximately 620,000 subscriptions.
One of these exam revision apps is QuizMax — which gives learners access to Maths, Physical Science and Life Sciences quizzes for South African grades 10, 11 and 12 — and it is the most popular exam revision app on Mxit, with over 200,000 subscribers.
Although the geographic map of where the subscribers live for one of the most popular exam revision apps, QuizMax, suggests that most of them are in urban areas (namely Gauteng, Cape Town and Kwazulu-Natal coastline), it’s becoming more apparent that the average mobile phone can become a transformative education tool for learners. This suggests that with the proliferation of internet enabled feature phones and low cost smartphones to rural areas, it is possible to assist scholars in those areas have access to extra help to prepare for their end year exams.
Andrew Rudge, Chief of Insight and Reach at Mxit said: “mLearning is powerful because it breaks through the traditional barriers of time, location and the cost of delivering educational content. The power of the Internet in an educational context has always been that it simplifies access to content and the experts on that content. With Mxit we are taking that power and making it easily accessible on the average feature phone.”
Ian McDougall, the founder of Learning to the Max Foundation, which developed QuizMax, said that the potential for QuizMax to improve learners’ ability to pass exams is undeniable.
“Last year our top achievers got over 92% in Maths and Physical Science and achieved their goals of securing scholarships and bursaries to study further,” he said.
“Because our 1500 questions are always available, the learner is able to learn independently. It doesn’t matter where they are, what time it is or what their current ability level is. This flexibility and independence, combined with the emergence of a technology generation, means that mLearning tools like QuizMax have the potential to truly empower learners and possibly transform education,” concluded McDougall.
Below is a list of the eight exam revision apps available to all Mxit users:
- QuizMax: Maths, Physical Science and Life Sciences quizzes for grade 10,11 and 12 learners
- Class of 2012 (DOBE): Tips and advice on study methods and additional study materials
- ExamZone: Chat room for exam discussions
- Everything Maths/Science: Curriculum aligned textbooks with embedded videos, simulations, PowerPoint presentations and more.
- CellSchool: Free video revision lessons to assist with exam preparation
- Crunch The Numbers: Put Maths skills to the test, and possibly win a bursary
- Dr Math: A Maths-tutoring programme developed by the CSIR Meraka Institute.
