We’ve decided to run our own internal competition. The prize will be bragging rights as the optimal process for future covers for OpenPress / FHSST texts. We are going to allocate the same budget sourcing sets of covers for the Maths and Physical Science books, but we are going to have the Maths set commissioned by a regular design firm and we’ll get the Physical Science ones created on 99Designs.
Quite frankly, my sympathy goes to the learners who have to share one book between four and cannot do their homework properly, while publishing house executives sit in plush offices dreaming up misleading copyright messages to intimidate teachers and learners.
EVEN THE NUMBER 1 science school in South Africa will benefit from having access to FHSST, Siyavula and OpenPress.
There are hints that Sam might not want to be programmer or a rugby player, but he may still change his mind.
We are going to run a full manual aggregation process to test and demonstrate the process we envisage for the OpenPress web-service.
The experience of crowdsourcing the logo on 99Designs was interesting, fun and ultimately quite exhausting. For the record, we are happy with the logo that we have and, as we’re moving forward with the project, are finally starting to show it to people.
I was quite excited to see a press release from the Office of the Governor for the state of California: Governor Schwarzenegger Signs Legislation Furthering Digital Textbook Initiative. But then I noticed one of the components signed off:
SB 48 by Senator Elaine Alquist (D-San Jose) requires that any individual, firm, partnership or corporation that offers [...]
I will get the chance to build an open assessment bank. The community of teachers in SA is chomping at the bit for such a tool and I have had multiple requests for bank software that communities are already prepared to populate themselves. Providing the different groups with a single tool will allow them to feed off each others energy and allow us to begin with a bang. Working with existing communities also makes the tool much more sustainable.
He was born at Constantiaberg Medi-Clinic and our experience was great (all things considered). The NICU staff were incredibly helpful, supportive and, although I cannot judge their expertise, they inspired confidence that he was being properly taken care of and he improved steadily. When making judgements about such things it is probably more important to know how things are handled when they go wrong rather than when everything is going according to plan. In our case, any sort of plan went out the window pretty quickly and things were handled quickly and efficiently, yet with empathy.
--> 4 Comments » Some photos of Sam for everyone to see, detailed commentary to follow:
Album of his progress in the Neonatal unit, hopefully he’ll be home soon.
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Highlights: removal of CPAP
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Highlights: removal of drip.
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Highlights: removal of heater, first ever bath.
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Highlights: two attempts to feed properly, soiling 3 nappies in one go, awake for more than 1 hour.
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Highlights: second bath (first by a parent), 3/4 grandparents visit.
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Highlights: feeding properly all day, ripping out his feeding tube by himself (that's my boy :).
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Highlights: mom slept over in the ICU, got moved to a private room (in ICU), fed properly all day.
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