By TANYA SMITH-CARTWRIGHT

tsmith-cartwright@tribunemedia.net

AFTER weeks of preparation by the Ministry of Education, the virtual learning system crashed on day one for thousands of public education students who tried to log on.

Parents, educators and students were up in arms yesterday when they, from their homes, logged on to the ministry’s new and much advertised virtual learning system only to meet the following message: “Undergoing maintenance. Thank you for being patient. We’re doing some work on the site and will be back shortly.”

That message could be seen on most of the laptops and tablets used by students, others however, did not get that far as their passwords did not work.

The Tribune contacted Education Director Marcellus Taylor, who admitted there was a problem with the system.

“We have a hotline and the people have called,” said Mr Taylor. “There is a challenge that is being worked on right now. The system is under maintenance to resolve the issue. The engineers are working on it and we hope that it will be resolved quickly.”

Students are to be in the virtual classroom until 3pm daily, and up to that time on Tuesday, the message on many of their individual screens remained the same.

Dianna Adderley, mother of a student at Anatol Rodgers, said it is a crying shame that her child cannot receive a consistent education like all school aged children should.

“We logged on and from the (beginning) we experienced issues,” she told this newspaper. “We tried my daughter’s password seven times and on the seventh time we got that message I showed you. The Minister of Education (Jeff Lloyd) has been hyping us up for months on this virtual learning and now nothing happens. So now what?

“I call day one a total and absolute failure. To think I took the day off to ensure my daughter was on the right path with this thing. So my day was totally wasted. We tried over and over and got the same message. It’s a faulty system and we can’t even hear from the teacher on this.”

Belinda Wilson, president of Bahamas Union of Teachers, said she warned that something like this would happen, but the Ministry of Education did not take heed.

“Well actually, I think I alluded to this weeks ago,” she said. “From we (teachers) returned to school September 7, we were experiencing issues from then and only teachers and administrators at the time were trying to log on to the Ministry of Education’s virtual platform. And from September 7 up until present, challenges continued, however today, which is the day when thousands of children and parents and teachers are supposed to log on to the system, then the cry now is, ‘we can’t get on.’

“I was saying that now for weeks that even the tablet that the Ministry of Education loaned to teachers was incompatible with Zoom and they needed to be upgraded for about $40 each in order for those tablets to work. So today, the proof is now in the pudding and the virtual school is non-existent because there are thousands of students and teachers who are unable to access it.”

Ms Wilson said not being able to log on to the system is only one problem that educators and students face with the virtual learning platform.

“What also happened that we are very concerned about is that not only are the students and teachers unable to log on, but work that teachers would have uploaded to the site, my understanding is, has been deleted. Students’ passwords are not working and the passwords that the students had a week or two ago were changed,” the president said.

“We are still uncertain as to the digital curriculum; what is the content that is being uploaded to the site? Is it completed? We are concerned about that. Teachers at this time do not know who they are going to be teaching. They do not have the names of their students, a class list or a number of students that are going to be in their classes. They have no contacts for the students, so students have been calling the teachers and the teachers haven’t been able to give them any viable information. And, the administrators seem just as lost as teachers.”

Asked if she had heard anything from the Ministry of Education on the matter of the broken virtual learning system, she responded, “Not one word!”

In a statement yesterday, the Ministry of Education said “technical challenges” prevented many students from accessing the virtual platform. The statement said most school administrators and teachers were able to implement “alternative modes of instruction” using their “plan B”.

The ministry said One on One and Amazon Web Services, the companies responsible for hosting the system, were working to address the issues.

Public schools opened to students on October 5, however last week was dedicated to orientation. Students in New Providence and Abaco must do virtual learning due to current COVID-19 restrictions. Students in other islands are being taught using face-to-face instruction or hybrid methods.