No predictions, just access

Michelle Tlou
Marketing & Research

It was January, teachers started dropping syllabi for 9 subjects and saying "these topics will make you break your finals." My head was already spinning, and that was week one. I thought , "Okay, i just need past papers to see the patterns"Thats what seniors kept saying : "Practice past papers, thats the cheat code".Which is so true but something still felt short.

But finding them was way harder than I expected, especially what others across the entire country are approaching them. It was 2023 and i assumed internet had it all organised for me. Instead every search lead me to dead links or sites that promised simplified explainations for questions but never delivered. Hours would disappear chasing resources that went nowhere. But pressure did not stop accumulating, and time did not stop moving , study planning remained unclear.

What made it worse was that exam prep wasnt just about papers. My head was turning from day one over topics that did not click in stochiometry in Chem, differentiation in Mathematics. I'd have a question in class at 8am but by 8pm I'have forgotten half of the context. Whatsapp groups tried to help, however with everyone in that group, your question would go unnoticed. And since I would also have some chats to reply to , distraction was almost inevitable reulting in losing more of that topic.

That frustration stuck with me for the entire year. Why can't we have our own platform dedicated for study materials of the national syllabi. Where possibly everyone in alll the schools around Zimbabwe is active for academic improvement purposes. Other schools have students clocking straight As doing the same thing I'm also doing. What if they are willing to help everyone get better? Thousands of teachers spred across the country who are willing to be providing their knowledge if they are given the space to do so, making them also see the progress others are making in other schools. What if there was kind of self sustaining chain of network, solely focused on learning and academics. Where I can spend the whole day browsing knowing anything I encounter will push me to learn more and every book, paper, article, post, course - all types of content would be benefiting my academic life. What if everyone was kept updated with whats happening across all academic institutions, to share the same vision - improving literacy rates for everyone across the nation; leaving nobody behind.

By the end of Form 4, I then realised , it was never a me problem of being slow. It was access, support and broad guidance from peers in a place that encourages academic work with little or no distraction of the principal goal of learning. Sources for information exist, however are flooded with distracting content, that has nothing to do with academics and learning. Thats when the solution became personal. I wanted something that could answer the questions I asked myself for the benefit of others still on their journey to make it easy for them. Something that merges what has become part of our lives recently and is shaping behaviours - social media; in many ways, some harmful because of how they eventually destroy the academic capacity of learners.

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it" - Alan Kay. We should'nt have to predict what we will need later. We should make it available now by creating it when we still can, for everyone to experience it for the better.

O level taught me this the hard way. You can't cram access. You get suprrised when others did their best in other school, simply because you dont share the same things to move together. Furthermore if the resources you need are not available when confusion first hits, students fall behind. Not everyone is able to browse safely online to get the resources they need. What if there was a safe place for that designed specifically for Zimbabwean educational resources? Where we pool resources together that sustain the majority and can be updated anytime if things change.

That feeling and experience is what drives my commitment to Freecolab ZW because this isn't a unique experience. It's something that we have paid attention to and tried to solve a couple of times through online libraries. However with thinking diffrently about the approach to it, in the most unconvential and unexpected way in the Zimbabwean context, we believe can make a great shift to achieve a self sustaining platform that benefit everyone with little or no barriers.