Country Day School students changing world of online education

November 12, 2020 · 0 Comments

Written By ROBERT BELARDI

Back in March when students made the egregious transition from the classroom to online learning, Sophia Joffe wasn’t fazed.

The Country Day School student (in grade 11 at the time), was intrigued with the concept of learning from home, however, marvelling at the new norm didn’t last long.

“It was really saddening for me to realize that this was the future for me and for a long time. There was a lot of uncertainty of when it would stop,” Joffe said over the phone.

She couldn’t believe this was the next step in education. She thought following a two-week closure she would be back in the classroom, and look how that turned out.

She quickly began to notice disparities between in-class learning and online learning. Joffe’s schedule isn’t based on semesters. She was juggling seven courses per day. She began researching comprehensive educational sites to help out with some of her classes, and after looking at government resources she quickly learned there wasn’t much help. Neither in Canada, nor the United States.

“The difference between the way I felt and my emotion between in-school and online is the lack of social interaction and not being able to talk about different things with my teachers and my peers and just the people around me. And just having a routine, waking up and going to school and doing my homework,” she elaborated.

“It’s something that we take for granted and we don’t realize how important it is to have a routine until it’s taken away from you.”

She concluded online classes were too much for her. She assumed it would be too much for everyone. By the time the end of the year rolled around, Joffe wanted to make a difference and fill a gaping hole that was the uncertainty of this learning method.

In the summer, Joffe contacted the CEO of Airtable, expressing her interest in changing the game for online learning. The company agreed and provided a free subscription.

Airtable is a software that helps to organize a plateau of pretty much whatever you want. Joffe began to organize reliable sources for online learning from Junior Kindergarten all the way to Post Secondary.

She developed a website to promote her content using Carrd, and is the founder of elearn.fyi.

She enquired about receiving another free subscription with the software firm BombBomb, which enables a user to embed a video inside of an email without the use of a hyperlink. She sent her pitch off to many other companies and media, getting an idea who might be interested.

She began to develop more contacts and became tightly woven with the company Meltwater. She emailed the CEO Jorn Lyseggen and the company provided a free subscription to the site to help her grow her entity and build connections. What was normally a $15,000/year subscription for this site was all at her disposal free of charge.

“I have an advisor they paired me with. Someone who is into not-for-profit organizations and she helped me find these contacts and gave me a lot of advice to help me move forward with what I was doing,” Joffe said.

Eventually, Joffe earned herself a spot in the New York Times. She began marketing further with the help of Meltwater. Over 3,000 emails later, something did come out of it.

She blew up. It took a while but she did it and landed interviews with various media companies across the country. A special on CBS aired earlier this month.

The Thornhill resident and now grade 12 student, says she has over 10,000 visitors in over 90 countries and over 1,000 cities. Her setup on AirTable has over 250 websites and tools for online learners to use.

“It’s so crazy to see how big this has gotten and it just made me realize how much of a need there is for this. It’s really changed me as a student and changed my perspective on online learning and the pandemic,” Joffe said.

“I think I found a sliver of hope and I found a good part in everything bad. I think that it’s a lot of hope for people and it shows there’s something good to be made in every bad situation. That’s a very big life lesson that I’ve learned and I’m glad I’m able to help so many people.”

Joffe says, governments can adapt to online learning methods in the same fashion companies such as Netflix cater to users’ interests.

There are platforms out there and she says online learning is here to stay. Adapting to the new way of education might change the minds of politicians to cultivate a beneficial system for young learners who are experiencing educational losses because of the virtual switch.

And if this is here to stay it’s time to make it better. For the good of all young learners.