Education Ministry’s new online learning platform crashes

The Ministry of Education’s online learning platform at learn.moe.gov.tt crashed on Tuesday, minutes after it was said to be up and running.

At a virtual press conference on Tuesday, the media asked Minister of State in the ministry Dr Lovell Francis, if the ministry anticipated that the site would crash if it were overloaded.

He said it was  “very stable” and could facilitate 1.4 million people at a time.

Within minutes over 100,000 users went to the website.

Lovell posted on Facebook: “Though our servers can carry everyone in TT please note that we received 100,000 hits on our LMS (learning management system) platform at the same time which created a network bottleneck. We are addressing the problem and it will be rectified shortly and will not happen again. Thanks so much, Cheers.”

After the site crashed, members of the public complained that the platform was unavailable.

It was set up to facilitate online learning while schools are closed because of the covid19 pandemic.

Francis later posted on Facebook: “When you open your big mouth and say that your servers can take a million hits of course the network is going to be overloaded at 100,000 and bottleneck and crash. Of course, that will happen. Lol.

“But I am happy to report that the website is back up and running and our servers have been adjusted so that this will not recur. And if I seem overly invested in this personally please understand that the coming of what I know will be an ICT revolution at the MOE has been for us both a sisyphean task and a labour of love so please bear with me in particular.”

The website is said to be outfitted with “high-level” tools, courses, learning content and virtual cases for ECCE, primary and secondary learning.