Svitlo means light. In its Zoom lessons, 93% of children now take part.
Svitlo School has provided free, extracurricular online learning in English for more than 4,000 Ukrainian children whose education has been disrupted by war. In a 2026 pilot, the children answered word clouds, quick polls and map questions by typing in the 
Zoom chat with StreamAlive, and the share actively taking part in a lesson rose from 66.9% to 93.1%.
- Who they are
- Free, extracurricular English lessons online for more than 4,000 Ukrainian children
- On Zoom
- Live lessons and community events
- How children answer
- Word clouds, quick polls and map questions, answered in the Zoom chat
- Measured
- 199 session records, May to July 2026
Nearly every child now takes part
The school compared its lessons before StreamAlive, from May 11 to June 8, with its lessons during the pilot, from June 23 to July 27: 199 session records in all.
- more chat messages per lesson
- 8.5×
- From 8.0 to 67.1 on average
- more chat every minute
- 14×
- From 0.18 to 2.62 messages a minute
- average lesson, against 50 before
- 47 min
- More voices without slowing the class down
In a class of ten, about three children stayed quiet
Svitlo is Ukrainian for light. The school has provided free, extracurricular online learning in English for more than 4,000 Ukrainian children whose education has been disrupted by war. The children go to their regular school each morning, online or in person depending on the region and the air-raid alerts, then join Svitlo’s lessons in the afternoons, evenings and at weekends. The school is built on making every child feel seen and heard.
On Zoom, that’s hard. Before the pilot, in a typical class of ten, about seven children took part. The usual ways to bring in the others ask a lot of a child: unmute and speak in front of everyone, or leave the lesson for a polling tool on another device.
Now every child answers in the Zoom chat, at the same moment
Svitlo’s team first saw StreamAlive at an online event. Nobody was sent to a separate polling tool or asked to scan a QR code: people answered inside Zoom and watched their answers appear. In 2026 the school piloted it in its classes.
With word clouds, quick polls and map questions, every child answers in the Zoom chat at the same moment, without leaving the lesson, reaching for a phone or speaking in front of everyone. The quiet ones stopped holding back.
What’s one English word you learned this week? Answer in the chat
- Sofiia Rainbow
- Maksym Library
- Anna Brave
- Dmytro Rainbow
- Olena Butterfly
- Taras Brave
- Iryna Weather
- Bohdan Rainbow
- Mariia Friend
- Andrii Brave
- Kateryna Journey
- Yurii Delicious
- Viktoriia Friend
- Nazar Rainbow
- Daryna Bicycle
- Oleh Brave
- Polina Kitchen
- Roman Friend
Type a word in the chat to add it to the cloud.
In the school’s own words
For a school built on making every child feel seen and heard, that shift from ‘most students engaged’ to ‘nearly every student engaged’ is the real story behind the numbers.
I literally couldn’t have imagined a better and quickest tool… for such deep interaction. We laughed, bonded, and shared a moment.
How to get every child taking part in an online lesson
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Let children answer without speaking up. Typing a word in the
Zoom chat is easier than unmuting in front of the class. In Svitlo’s pilot, the quiet children stopped holding back. -
Ask everyone at the same moment. A word cloud or quick poll gets every child answering together, instead of one at a time while the rest wait.
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Keep it inside the lesson. No phone, QR code or second tool: the children stay in
Zoom, and the lesson keeps its pace. Svitlo’s lessons averaged 47 minutes in the pilot, against 50 before. -
Measure participation, not attendance. Svitlo counted how many children actively took part in each lesson, which is how it could show the change from 66.9% to 93.1%.
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Give less confident teachers time at the start. Some of Svitlo’s teachers, several of them retired, found it hard at first. The school spent time with them one to one and wrote its own guides for them. Plan for that before you launch it across a team.
