My name is Riekie Botha. I started JFundi Software a few years ago when my eldest son was in grade 5. The name JFundi, comes from Java, the programming language and from the Zulu word umfundi, which means pupil. To help my son learn his multiplication tables, I always tested him by asking the tables on a random basis. That, however, was quite time consuming. It was also hard to determine exactly which tables were his Achilles’ heel. As I had been a software programmer for more than 17 years at the time, the idea of writing a little program that would give my son the practice he needed, monitor his progress and show me which tables he struggled with most, started to dawn on me. I immediately commenced writing the program in Java, as this was the language I was most familiar with. It took a lot of time and effort to get it in its current form.

My son used it for a few weeks and the results were amazing. After telling one of my friends how well he was doing with this program she immediately ordered one for her son. Needless to say that boy’s multiplication skills suddenly improved notably and his mother, who knew almost everybody at school, started to sell the program to other mums who had similar “problem” kids.

What I found nice about the program was the fact that I could just tell my son to go and practice his times tables and bring me the report afterwards. I could then monitor his progress easily – always checking if the time he took to complete a session decreased steadily and also to find out which tables he still struggled with. Just the idea of “maybe this thing could help thousands of other kids to learn their multiplication tables” made me think about creating a website that would be easy to access, download and install on a simple home computer. Since then I put in a lot of effort to write a user-friendly install for the Java program so that it can be installed on Windows, Linux and other platforms. My son is now in high school and keeps on doing well in mathematics – a fact that makes me a very proud mother.

I have another four- year old son and will obviously put him through the same drill the moment  he starts learning times tables in his junior grades. I hope to write much more useful educational software in future, as this is my passion.

When I created this website I had to learn a lot about Joomla. I created my own Joomla template. I am sure there is still a lot to do before it is “perfect” but is one ever satisfied with your own work? At the moment I am also maintaining a few other websites. I hope you like my clever owl, as this is also my own work. I used PhotoImpact to produce it. So, as you can see, I really put a lot of hard work into everything on this website! I did my best to make people comfortable and to trust this website, hence I installed an SSL certificate to secure online shopping and downloading the program.

I chose a host which offers all the security features required for a secure Joomla site, using the SFTP (secure file transfer) to put my software on their server and setting passwords on the directory. I further calculated the unique hash value of each downloadable file so that customers can check if the file that they downloaded, conforms to the one I  put on the server. The software is now free, so download now and help your child!

I really hope you will try out this software because I believe this is a great investment in your child's future!

Regards
Riekie Botha
Bsc Honours Computer Science
University of Pretoria