The Nation yesterday facilitated the release of a free phone-downloadable pilot edition of Fashola.exe, Nigeria’s first e-learning software, to aid students preparing for next week’s Universal Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

It was released on Facebook, the world’s number one social networking website, patronised by almost three million Nigerian phone users, particularly Nigerian youths.

The release medium is on the wings of The Nation’s burgeoning computer user forum,

PCUser2User.

It is available for free download on the internet at www.facebook.com/pcuser2user.

Fashola.exe
is an English-language examination test and practice software sponsored by ex-students of Lagos-based Birch Freeman High School.



It was first released by the ex-students, in the thick of the April 2011 election, as a mark of honour and support for Governor Babatunde Fashola’s re-election bid. The governor was an ex- student of the school.

Publishers and sponsors of the software said the software was released to "herald the use of digital-age learning tools to teach digital-age students".

They believe a radical change in teaching style, from yesterday’s analogue methods to today’s digital techniques, hold the key to a reversal of the worrying trend of mass failure in standard examinations, by Nigerian secondary students.

Only last week, publishers of the novel software, announced a breakthrough release of a television-viewable version of the new last-minute examination test/practice, learning and revision tool, similar to Fashola.exe.

A 15-minute preview of the new video-based tutorial is on the internet, on the same PCUser2User page on Facebook and on

Youtube.

The new e-learning tools now seemingly available in software and television-viewable formats, offer hours of interactive tutorials using answer options to examination questions, to teach principles of the subjects. The tutorials are drawn from more than 100,000 past question and answers already available with Nigeria’s oldest Media archive, The Media Databank.

New disc-based models of the e-learning tools, will contain up to 20 hours of television-viewable test and practice tutorials as well as thousands of past examination question and answers for interactive use on computers. The discs can also contain dictionaries, unit converters, educational games and hundreds of e-books.


http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/news/8721-fashola-exe-jamb-e-learning-software-now-on-facebook.html