CHILDREN from grades four to eleven can now practice for their examinations through access to some 45,000 questions drawn from international, regional and local sources.

This pool of questions comes from Braincentral–an online environment where students can get help with their studies. According to Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Braincentral, Lance Hinds, “We have 45,000 questions online which we use to build a range of questions for students to take.”

He explained that these questions have not only been drawn from local sources, but Braincentral also has “agreements” with international content providers.
Hinds noted, “They [the questions] are from far and wide but they are classified in various grades.” This, as said by him, enables students to have a wider scope of understanding of the subject areas.

“When someone is taking one of our quizzes, they have a wider experience which makes them a better student and better enables them to take the exams locally,” he said. With these quizzes also, Hinds explained that the online platform allows for “simulation exercises”. With these exercises, students would be placed under exam conditions, I.e., answering a fixed number of questions under a time limit, just as the national examinations.

And since it is an online platform, the CEO highlighted that marking is done in real time so students and parents would be able to garner their grades right away and see where their downfall and/or successes were immediately. Additional features offered on the platform include: live tutorials, recorded sessions, discussion forums and chat rooms, all tailored to provide the best experience for children.

While the platform has already been launched and is available at www.braincentral.online , Lance related that there have been talks with the Ministry of Education to integrate the platform.

“We have begun talks on the harmonisation of this,” he said and noted that some private schools have already been approached to pilot the programme. Moreover, children in the community of Victoria are also set to benefit, since members of the platform made arrangement with the local cafes to let the children use the application free of cost for a specified time. There is also talks for this to be done through the Ministry of Public Telecommunications (MoTP)’s ICT hubs. “Part of what we’ve proposed to the ministry (of education) is to let children use the application free of cost for a specific period, say 2pm to 5pm every day,” he revealed.

Aside from that, the cost for children to use this application would be a meagre $1500 a month. This, Hinds explained, is only because the platform has its operational costs and is thus only a “partially commercial venture”.

But that’s not all that children can garner from Braincentral. Students of Grades Six and Nine will also get a chance to test their knowledge of Mathematics and win a tablet through the ‘Math Olympiad’ being hosted on Braincentral through support from Scotiabank.
This Olympiad will be held on March 3, 2018 when participants–students preparing for the grade six and nine examinations–can go online on March 3, 2018 and simultaneously take two timed quizzes.

These quizzes will consist of 40 questions to be completed in 50 minutes and the top five winners will be selected and awarded tablets after the second and final round.
Students are required to review the rules and sign up for the competition at Braincentral’s website.