VLE FROG: Why spend millions on something that is not user-friendly?

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By Stephen Ng


Every year, millions of Ringgit goes to the company that maintains VLE Frog, a portal that is meant to be used by school children.

However, since it was launched a few years ago, my children hardly log on. The is just no need to log on to VLE Frog.

The idea of teachers uploading the list of homework, for example, does not make much sense as it adds on to the administrative burden of teachers.

The traditional way of teachers writing on the board and students copying the daily list of homework is more practical, besides helping the children to learn to use the correct spellings.

In the case of my children, I have provided a zipped folder for them, where they can put all their daily homework in. All that they need to do when the get home is to pull out the homework pouch, and everything is in there.

The only features that I find useful in VLE Frog are the digital version of the textbooks and some storybooks.

However, it does not provide a Read Aloud application that helps children who are weak in their Mandarin (my children being enrolled in a Chinese primary school) to learn new words.

In my opinion, such digital books could be provided to the National Library archive so that kids can have access to them. This also encourages kids to become members of the National Library.

In this day and age, it is important for the Ministry of Education to go through the process of rationalisation and channel its budget to some more useful initiatives.

To me, I think it would help if the ministry kickstart a negotiation with two or three online learning portals so that kids can sign up paying only a small amount.

Currently, my children are enrolled with V-School and I-LearnAce. It is costing us some RM700 to RM800 per annum, but I find they are useful for self-learning and both my children appear to like the portals very much.


END.


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