Why do our pay TV providers provide so little real choice in their bouquets of channels. I’d like to see them take advantage of the fact that its all digital and that they could easily offer customers real options and I’m sure still make profit! Here is my suggestion for how they should structure the bouquets to be more dynamic and accommodating.

Siyavula intends to create a framework that supports the education system. The framework needs to accept the curriculum, allow swap-and-share groups the ability to share resources and have the discussions they need, allow users like Curriculum Advisors to vet resources and ensure that the isolated teachers can get access to the resources.

Turns out Mbilwi Secondary School has been doing a great job for many years.

I’m charging on ahead with development of the open assessment bank. We will be calling it FullMarks and the most important feature will be that teachers can actively participate.

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.

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.

As part of my Fellowship at the Shuttleworth Foundation I have the opportunity to try things. I’ve got Siyavula, OpenPress and now I’m toying with adding an open assessment bank to the mix.