African Virtual School
I am passionate about education and have been thinking for a long time about how education could be used to develop Africa. I have had several attempts – from learnbook.net, which attempted to provide textbooks through to http://www.instantrevision.com, an online revision site for senior secondary West African students. I was not entirely happy with the results though because:
- the cost of shipping and distributing textbooks proved to be too high and
- in the case of instantrevision.com, I relied on the content from the West African Examinations Council which I did not feel reflected the changes in education over the alst 15 years.
- Finally, difficulties getting payment over the Internet from Africa
The African Virtual School (www.africanvirtualschool.com) seeks to overcome all of these three obstacles.
- The AVS focuses on Numeracy (Maths), Literacy (English) and ICT and all the material is original but modeled on UK standards.
- All the material will be digital and can be read online or downloaded
We are still struggling to find a solution to the payment problem but have started encouraging conversations with one scratch card payment provider and are also exploring mobile payments.
I am excited about the prospect that AVS holds and look forward to a large uptake.
