A comprehensive web and mobile education platform is going to launch in the Caribbean next month — its first stop, Jamaica.
SmartTerm is a New Jersey-based web platform created by six Caribbean-American men — five from Jamaica and one from Trinidad. The program is going to provide students, parents, and educators with the best tool to serve their education needs by facilitating communication. The platform will be used to log and track information between the school and students and their families, and hopes to bridge the gap between educators and their students.
“It’s a cohesive web-platform that connects administrators, students, and parents,” said Theon O’Connor, director of communication for SmartTerm.
SmartTerm creators say the platform will allow students to communicate with their classmates, complete and submit homework, see disciplinary actions, check grades, and even have health records uploaded. Parents and teachers will also have access to the program allowing parents to be on the same track with teachers when it comes to their child’s education.
The platform is hyper focused on the Caribbean due to already limited access, which they say is going to present one of the the biggest challenges SmartTerm will encounter.
“Based on our research, there’s a lot that the Caribbean lacks compared to other regions of the world. The world is going further and faster into digital technology, and we think SmartTerm will be the way forward for education in schools for the future,” said Sean Wilkinson, chief technology officer for SmartTerm.
The company plans to start demos next month in Jamaica where they will introduce the platforms features, and display how it will benefit the school system. They will also expand into Trinidad and Barbados some months later, and eventually branch out to other islands if the launch is a success.
The brains behind SmartTerm, Shamir Saddler and Stuart Crooks, are alumni’s of Howard University in Washington D.C. The duo decided to create SmartTerm upon experiencing the educational tools used here in the United States, and wanted to develop their own. They are joined by friends O’Connor, Jomo Haldane, Jayme Hoyte, and Sean Wilkinson.
“In summary, SmartTerm was created to increase efficiency in schools, getting the Caribbean region as a whole more involved with technology and lessening the manual burden of the administrative side of the education sector,” said Crooks.
O’Connor says SmartTerm will change the future of the Caribbean and hopes that the diaspora can find gratitude with their innovation.
“We really want people to understand what we’re doing for the Caribbean community,” said O’Connor.
“Some people like to say that when people move away, we don’t remember where we’re from — and just living in U.S. with no care or concern about home. We want the people here to know that we do.”
SmartTerm launches in Jamaica on July 1.
