Rael has been involved in education technology for the last 15 years. Rael began his career as an Economics lecturer. Rael founded Channel Campus this company created interactive video based material for University Level Courses. Later this company merged with William Smith of SABC fame to form a company called Learning Channel Campus.
Presentation: Rael Lissoos (.ppt)
This company developed South Africa’s first educational web-site http://www.learn.co.za. It also developed the educational supplements that we now see in all the major South African newspapers. The company also created interactive school CD’s, Videos and Learning software. This company was later taken over by Johnnic and seeded the establishment of Mindset.
Rael then went on to found Learnthings http://www.learnthings.co.uk, http://www.learn.co.uk, http://www.learnpremium.co.uk. This was a joint venture with the Guardian Media Group in the UK. This company became the largest provider of browser based educational content and has over 2500 schools in the UK as well as many other countries. The Guardian took a 100% stake in the company two years ago; Rael stayed for a few months then started a new company to focus on rich media educational content delivery. The new company has deployed its system in Ghana, Lesotho, South Africa and Kenya. It has a holistic and efficient system to deliver educational content. Rael’s company continually researches all new technologies and sees how they can be most effectively applied to the educational field.
Currently as director of Magnolia Wireless and VIKO, Rael is deploying broad based distribution solutions to rural and urban schools. These include VOIP, Wireless (WIFI, Satellite, GPRS, MultiCast and UHF VHF) Learning Management Systems, Media Streaming Solutions etc. Rael has also started to deploy a wide range of Open Source Solutions.
During the installations of remote schools Rael realized there was a serious problem in communication systems in the under serviced areas due to both infrastructure and price. So in some of the wireless rural connectivity a VOIP server was included. The ability for all the schools to call each other for free was included. This led to the formation of http://www.voip.co.za South Africa’s first free Sip server—(this is currently being rebuilt for new applications).
This roll-out was expanded upon to form a telecommunications company called Dabba. Dabba has developed a voice and data solution for rural and township areas. Dabba is currently testing in 2 township areas close to Johannesburg and one in the Erkhurleni.
The system includes the wireless network, back-end software, client devices and management systems for a local deployment. Extensive testing has taken place and various solutions have been tried. Metrics of Capacity, Price, Scalability, Stability and ease of deployment have been considered.
