Governance Tools · 2026
VulaLearn
An education platform used by understaffed schools in South Africa, with a past-papers library for exam preparation.
FirebaseFirestore
Problem
Understaffed schools need reliable study resources, but connectivity, devices, and support are all unreliable.
Why I built it
I wanted to build something real people depend on — and learn what breaks when software meets the real world.
Architecture
- A content pipeline ingests and organizes past exam papers for search and browsing by subject and year.
- Pages are kept lightweight so the site loads on slow connections and low-end devices.
Implementation
- Past-papers library with search across subjects and years.
- Lightweight pages optimized for low bandwidth.
What I learned
- Deployment constraints — connectivity, devices, support — shape architecture more than any framework choice.
- Real users find failure modes no test suite covers.
Next questions
- How should offline-first design change the architecture?
- What does sustainable maintenance look like for school-deployed software?