Underscoring the use of technology in education to help students learn anywhere and anytime (Alizadeh, 2018). Digital technologies have been utilized to improve and help teaching and learning the language. The technologies also help educators to adapt modern teaching methods (Alakrash, 2020). The change of traditional face-to-face classroom learning to online learning is applicable due to the development of new technologies (Ni She. et al., 2019). The online expansion of digital technologies, multimedia, and social networks, dramatically transformed our lives (Xodabande, 2017). Online education has been established worldwide as a radical departure from traditional styles of teaching due to the unexpected emergency created by Covid-19 (Rajendra et al., 2020). Telegram is an online learning platform that can connect teachers and students to make interactive learning environment (Putra, 2021). This application, a free online app, has everything in itself: a massive cloud-based storage system to keep the files, a venue for organizing collaborative online classes, dozens of robot assistants, and the capability of making one’s own customized robot for any particular purpose (Faramarzi et al., 2019; Alahmad, 2020).
Telegram is a user-friendly application as it is easy to use with the advantages of embedded stickers in their system. This application can be used to download and receive assorted documents with different capacity compared to Whats App. Telegram is a various stage application that can run on, iOS Android, Phone, Windows, and Mac (Alakrash, 2020). According to Manna & Ghosh (2018) and Faramarzi et al., (2019) Telegram is very helpful for teacher or students in sending big file size like e-books, e-articles, audio, and video materials in the process of teaching and learning. Telegram could send messages, photos, videos, audio and file of any type up to 1.5 GB.
Telegram app has different contributions among different fields other than education field (Yinka and Queendarline, 2018). In addition, the author Aghajani and Adloo, 2018 who reported that, telegram application has a great number of advantages in teaching and learning. Moreover, Ibrahim (2016) Telegram app is a simple learning tool for sharing information and teaching and learning processes. It is a helpful tool for students who are learning a new language. The utilization of telegram application as teaching media can be an efficient tool, which help the teacher in the effort of enhancing students’ ability of writing and reading skills (Putra, 2021). Telegram as a powerful device used for online language learning programs that possesses major advantages to facilitate the process of learning for improving their major skills and sub-skills (Faramarzi et al., 2019).
Ge’ez language is a language born in Ethiopia and growing in Ethiopia. It has its own way of alphabets, words and sentences, and many manuscripts have written and translated from other language (Rezene, 2015). Ge'ez (Ethiopic) is one of the ancient language and many manuscripts are already archived by Ethiopian Orthodox Church as well as by the National Archival agency (Taddese, 1972). Amsalu Tefera 2019 also estimated that the country Ethiopia has more than 1,000,000 manuscripts and several thousands of manuscripts are found abroad. The manuscripts contained Religious, Philosophical, Historical, Social Law and Statecraft, Cultural, Mathematical, Astronomical, and several related disciplines (Selomon, 2020). Due to this the language need an attention to dig out the resource behind it. Nowadays, Ge'ez is the most imperative language used in the liturgy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church (EOTC), the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahido Church, the Ethiopian Catholic Church, the Eritrean Catholic Church, and the Beta Israel Jewish community (Bulakh and Kogan, 2010).
Before Ge’ez has researched and taught in Ethiopia, European and United States of America Universities. The EOTC traditional school is the source of Ge’ez language and teaching Ge’ez in its schools they exist inside and outside of the country (Tadesse, 2018). Therefore, the EOTC is the only source of teaching and preserving Ge’ez language up to the date modern educational institution and online learning system are well researched and taught. The schools have three major classifications. These are the elementary school, the medium school, and the high school. (Tsegaye, 2011; Aselefech, 2014). Additionally, Yigzaw and Boudreau, (2010) also reported that a thousands of Church schools in Ethiopia, which have been working for over one thousand years and providing a variety of education that ranges from low to high level of complexity. As a result, Traditional church schools and churches hold an irreplaceable share in the development of Ge’ez language heritage (Molla, 2018). However, the EOTC traditional schools have spent much time in teaching about the three thousand years of the history of Ethiopia (Molla, 2018).
Currently, Ge’ez language is becoming a well-known by local and international community; because of this, there is an increase in the number of Ge’ez language speakers from time to time (Tadesse, 2018). The process of learning a second language (additional languages in general) is highly time consuming and requires large amounts of input and interaction (Blake, 2008). Despite of this, Telegram app supports learning and teaching enhancement by offering a quick and easy way of creating and sharing information (Ibrahim, 2016). This applications considered as a student-centered asynchronous teaching method that uses online learning resources to facilitate information sharing outside the constraints of time and place among a network of people (Yinka and Queendarline, 2018; Putra, 2021). Therefore, to help the interested person to know Ge’ez language in the telegram platform, the present study was aimed to investigate the role telegram application for information sharing in ther online Ge’ez language learning.