Educational apps point to the future
Education technologies that ensure learning continuity have evolved rapidly since COVID-19 struck. Providers of educational apps, software and hardware solutions to support remote learning see growing opportunities with a blended educational model for K-12 (kindergarten to secondary school) students in the post-pandemic world.
Mandarin Matrix, an online platform for K-12 students to learn Mandarin as a second language, said it has been providing free licenses for Hong Kong schools that had not registered with the platform before but need online Mandarin-learning materials.
"Many schools now say they need this because there'll be waves of the virus. And schools have to continue supporting children online, as well as in a more classical offline classroom environment," said David Tait, chief executive of MMX.
Headquartered at Cyberport, the cloud-based Mandarin learning platform offers guided reading solutions for Mandarin learners from kindergarten to middle school. Students can access the online Mandarin reading materials to consolidate what they've learned.
The platform has navigation in English, French, Spanish, Japanese and Arabic and will introduce Thai, Bahasa (spoken in Malaysia and Indonesia) and Tagalog (used in the Philippines) over the next six to nine months, according to MMX.
Tait said the pandemic has accelerated the platform's expansion plan and the company is looking at new nodes in countries and regions involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, the Middle East and the US.
MMX was created as a business-to-business model by providing licenses to schools. Tait said they're now building up a business-to-customer model amid rising global demand for learning Mandarin.
It's difficult to get enough teachers, he said, and Mandarin can be taught remotely if there aren't enough teachers.
To help students achieve self-regulated learning, the company is developing avatar technology with partners at Hong Kong Science Park that enables children to learn through the platforms themselves with the help of intelligent robots.
In Hong Kong, MMX has about 11,500 active users in 53 international schools. Tait said the company saw a 128 percent increase in license users from January to May.
"The number of schools has grown by a similar percentage partially because we offered complimentary licenses when schools suspended classes due to COVID-19," Tait said.
In April, the Department for Education in the United Kingdom approached MMX to support its Mandarin Excellence Program. The company started working with the University of London and took in 77 new schools in May to support students learning Mandarin during the pandemic.
Tait said the company expects the biggest growth in countries and regions involved in BRI as economic needs will drive educational planning with Mandarin as a foreign language.
According to a report by HolonIQ - a global education market intelligence firm - total edtech expenditure worldwide is expected to reach $404 billion by 2025, representing a 16.3 percent compound annual growth rate.
HolonIQ said a short term surge in edtech spending brought on by COVID-19 is expected to recalibrate to a long-term integration of digital technologies and transition to a much higher adoption of online education in the next few years.
Tait believes that a blended educational model combining physical and digital will be a permanent model for students in future.
"Teachers are vital in developing children's academic performance while online education platforms can help in individual learning and supporting more repetitive learning tasks with the use of bots and avatars," he said.
