The tuXlab project was initiated by the Shuttleworth Foundation in 2002 aiming to provide schools in South Africa with a model for setting up and running educational computer labs making use of powerful open source software. The tuXlab model is aligned to the South African government's E-Education White-paper and around the open source philosophy of freedom to share, use, replicate, develop and distribute software solutions.
The project started in the Western Cape offering schools an effective solution for their computer labs. Since then the project has seen the implementation of over 130 labs in three provinces, with 160 000 learners benefiting from open source computer labs used as a medium for delivering educational curriculum.
Learners, teachers and volunteers are also encouraged to get involved in the deployment of tuXlabs, further empowering them with the skills needed to set up and install computer labs through a skills transfer process that builds capacity within the community to maintain the lab going forward.
This skills transfer process is integral to the tuXlab project as it aids in the development of a robust and sustainable open source community of volunteers that are able to service existing installations of tuXlabs and contribute to the implementation of future open source computing installations within their communities while helping to alleviating the skills shortage being suffered in the South African ICT sector. It is the hope of the Shuttleworth Foundation that tuXlabs progresses to becoming a wholly community-run project in the future.
Inkululeko