I am now a complete convert to crowdsourcing. Given my experiences with the Siyavula logo and web-design processes I think that a site like 99 Designs, that has a critical mass of designers, really provides a light-weight, cost-effective and rapid solution for most of my design needs. I will launch a contest, in the near future, to start improving the look of this site I just need to bolster the content so the purpose and scope are clearer 
Good web-design is going to be key to the success or failure of some of my upcoming projects and so spending some time immersing myself in trying to apply some of the ideas to my own site allows me to kill two birds with one stone, build my own theme and really engage with some web-design principles so that they sink in.
I have a Fellowship from the Shuttleworth Foundation to work in the area of Open and Collaborative Resources. My Fellowship enables me to work on a number of projects in this area. I believe in the liberation of information and supporting education in South Africa.
I manage the Siyavula project, where I co-ordinate the development of a comprehensive set of Open Educational Resources (OER) supporting the South African National Curriculum.
Along with Sam Halliday, I co-founded the Free High School Science Texts (FHSST) project which launched in 2002 and has collaboratively produced a set of openly licenced science and mathematics textbooks
In collaboration with Steve Song, Interconnectedness Fellow, I founded OpenPress, a project to deploy a print aggregation service to support teachers.
I also run FullMarks, an open assessment bank, to help teachers rapidly generate tests, capture results and access reports based on those results.
I have a PhD in physics from the University of Cape Town and conducted my research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California on the results from the STAR experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.
My blog highlights the progress on my various projects and contains thoughts on the OER space as well as life in general.
Twitter: marknewlyn
- First #FullMarks RSVP a couple of minutes ago - from a school I haven't even spoken to - AWESOME! :-)
- Just connected with a Curriculum Advisor about attending the #FullMarks sprint upload event - wicked!!
- Checking my email for the first time since Wednesday - it hurts as expected!
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