e-Learning sounds goods in paper and forward-thinking, but its implementation remains a serious challenge for many governments across Africa and other developing nations. Take, for instance in South Africa (SA) where the industry experts say very few schools in the country have the ability to effectively roll our e-learning programs. That inability is attributed to a lack of understanding of the e-learning platforms, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with SPARK Schools in SA.
SPARK Schools describe itself as an innovative network of private schools in SA that was founded in 2012. It has gone big on tech and adopted one of the world’s best learning management system – itslearning – as the schools’ learning platform.
What is itslearning
In August 2018, Google partnered with itslearning to create a world class learning management system (LMS) and integrated it into G Suite. SPARK Schools have been a longtime enterprise consumer of Google Classroom and naturally, they bought into the idea of itslearning through G Suite.
Google and itslearning featured the adoption of their LMS by SPARK Schools at the BETT 2019, a world’s class international tech show that was recently held in London. SPARK Schools started out by adopting the G Suite LMS package, Google Classroom, for their 15 schools in 2017.
“We are proud to announce that we have partnered with SPARK Schools in South Africa,” announced Thomas Gunleiksrud, the Vice President of International Sales at itslearning.
“An initial base of more than 10,000 users may double as SPARK Schools has 21 schools today and is opening new schools every year.
SPARK Schools is a really innovative network of private schools in South Africa. They aim to combine the best of education technology from around the world with the best practices from the traditional classroom, to create world-class education.”
SPARK Schools integrating itslearning LMS
SPARK Schools has won numerous awards and recognitions in SA as a provider of quality and affordable education. The network of school has just opened its first high school in Johannesburg this year.
SPARK Schools is now in the process of integrating itslearning LMS for Grades R to 12 into their academic programs for all schools in its network.
Stacey Brewer, co-founder of SPARK Schools said, “SPARK’s vision is for South Africa to lead global education and we believe that by partnering with itslearning and Google we will be able to achieve the vision and mission of ensuring access to high-quality education for all South Africans.”