Hey iCommoners

Greetings from a hot and sunny University of the Western Cape (UWC) in Belville, South Africa.

I am working here as a volunteer under the auspices of IESC GeekCorps as part of the Digital Freedom Initiative, a USAID funded program. GeekCorps is currently sponsoring three volunteers, each for a period of three months, to assist in the development of a suite of open-source educational software tools. We will be focusing on a software platform called 'Chisimba', which is a framework and set of building blocks which can be used to create open, collaborative, web-based applications, with an initial focus on the educational sector.

The name 'Chisimba' comes from Chichewa, a Bantu family language spoken in parts of East, Central and Southern Africa (mainly Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique). The word itself means 'framework' - referring to the framework for building a traditional African house. Chisimba is being built by a number of developers at the University of the Western Cape in conjunction with various partners from across the continent (16 other African higher education institutions at the last count). It is free, open source software released under the GNU GPL. Chisimba provides the basic framework upon which a wide range of web-based applications can be developed. These are typically developed as modules which users can then pick and choose according to their own needs.

The current Chisimba modules provide a wide range of functionality including blogs, calendars, chat, e-mail, essays, assignments, search, wiki, FAQ, glossaries and so on. The framework has been designed in such a way that contributors can develop additional modules if they require extra functionality that is not currently available.

The GeekCorps volunteers have been chosen based on their technical skills and experience in the ICT field. The aim of this is to be able to share these skills with people in developing countries.

That's the official line, but of course on every project this will manifest itself differently. Here at UWC, us 'geeks' are working on a number of tasks like improving the development processes, introducing the use of bug-tracking systems, giving presentations, providing guidance and feedback, mentoring developers, and even writing some code!

One of the main tasks that I have been given is to look at the development of a new set of Chisimba modules, which will be used to build an online, real-time, virtual classroom. The vision for this project is to be able to deliver online learning through the use of video and voice presentations, a whiteboard, instant messaging and other tools, which can be combined in various ways. Currently the whiteboard functionality is well on its way with a core code base developed by previous volunteers that is now being maintained and extended by a developer in Kenya. The next step is to try and attempt to get some form of Voice Over IP (VOIP) implemented ' think Skype conference calls running in a browser.

This is no small challenge and currently I'm trying to get a very simple proof-of-concept up and running to see whether this is technically feasible, given that it should also run cross-platform (Linux, Windows and hopefully Mac too). The intention is for me to get the foundations in place and work with two interns employed by the university who I will mentor, assist and train so that they can carry on with future development once my time here has ended.

Anyway, all of this should keep me off the streets for the next couple of months and I will be sure to let you know how things progress.

In the meantime I really must see if I can squeeze in some time in the African sun instead of sitting here bathed in the lights of monitors...

Peace,

Adrian

tags: Cape Town South Africa education geekcorps chisimba open-source

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