What a Zoom lesson at Nova actually looks like

Say "online lessons" to a South African parent and they think of 2020 — a child propped in front of a laptop for six hours, a teacher talking to twenty-eight black rectangles, and nothing much learned by anybody.

That was a whole country improvising a school day into a webcam under emergency conditions. It went badly for reasons that had almost nothing to do with the technology, and it left a fair impression that this does not work.

What we do is a different shape, and the difference is worth setting out properly, because for families outside Lydenburg it is the whole service.

The teaching is not the Zoom call

This is the part that changes everything, so we will put it first.

On every one of our programmes, the lessons themselves are recorded video. Study.com through My Online School, the CambriLearn CAPS lessons, the GED material — the teaching is already on video, with quizzes, transcripts and practice tests behind it.

That means a lesson can be paused. Rewound. Watched at six in the morning, or at ten at night, or four times in a row until the penny drops. Nobody sighs at the third question, because there is nobody to sigh.

A very large share of the students who fail are not students who cannot learn the work. They are students who could not learn it at the speed it was said out loud, once, in a room where asking again is socially expensive. Video removes that problem entirely, and it removes it whether the student is sitting in our centre on Church Street or on a farm outside Ohrigstad.

So the live session is not the lecture. It is the catching.

What actually happens in a session

Sessions are arranged around the student rather than around a timetable — early, late, or around a job — and they are one-on-one or in a very small group, not a class of thirty.

A typical one runs something like this.

1. 1What did you do, and where did it stop? The tutor already knows what has been watched and what the quiz scores said. The session starts from the actual gap rather than from the syllabus.
2. 2The concept gets worked through, out loud, with the student talking. Not re-explained at them. Screen sharing, a shared document, a worked problem the student drives while the tutor watches where it goes wrong. This is the bit a video cannot do, and it is precisely why we exist.
3. 3Something gets set on that specific thing. Extra tests on the concept that did not hold, so that understanding is verified rather than hoped for.
4. 4The week gets planned. What gets watched, what gets written, what is due. Short and concrete.
5. 5Somebody checks next time. That last one is not a step in the session. It is the reason the session works.

Written work is still done on paper, particularly on the CAPS route where a good deal of paperwork runs alongside the videos and the finals are paper-based. Screens do not remove the pen.

What you need on your side

Genuinely not much.

• A laptop the student can use. It does not need to be new. It needs to run video and a browser reliably.
• An internet connection good enough for video. For students working from home, that connection is yours to arrange. We provide it for full-time students at the centre.
• A place to sit where the household noise is survivable. A kitchen table is fine. A bedroom door that closes is better.

That is the list.

Who it works for

• Students an hour or more from a decent school. The drive was never educational. More on this in finishing school from Ohrigstad, Burgersfort or Dullstroom.
• Students who have moved mid-year, on a mine contract or a transfer, and would otherwise lose a school year to the move.
• Students who need to hear something more than once, and have been in a system that ran out of patience for that.
• Adults studying around shift work. The session is booked around the roster, not the other way round.
• Students already enrolled elsewhere who just need the finals prepared for. You do not have to move anything. Exam preparation on its own is a completely normal reason to phone.

Who it does not work for

We would rather be straight about this than have you discover it in April.

A student who needs somebody physically in the room. If the real problem is that nothing gets done unless an adult is present, a Zoom link will not fix it and neither will a login. Those students do far better at the centre, at least at first. Plenty of families start full-time in Lydenburg and shift to remote once the habit is built — that is a good plan, and we are happy to run it that way.

Very young children with nobody home. A Grade 3 learner working online needs an adult nearby. Not teaching, but present.

Practical subject components. Some creative and practical subjects need specific arrangements, and those are easier close to town. Ask before you count on a subject.

The camera is not the teaching, and it never was. The teaching is a person who knows what this particular student did not understand on Tuesday.

Try one and see

If you are unsure whether this suits your child, the useful thing is not more reading. It is a conversation, and then a session.

Tell us the age, the last grade completed and what has been getting in the way. We will tell you which programme fits, and whether we would start you at the centre or over Zoom.

Call or WhatsApp us. We are in Lydenburg, and on Zoom everywhere else.