🤝 Wanna Join Us?

[ibrahim-sisar]

Welcome to the team application corner! 🎯
If you're passionate about open-source, education, or just want to be part of something meaningful – you're in the right place.

📌 In your comment, please include:

• Your name or nickname

• Your Discord username (so we can connect)

• Your skills (e.g. Python, React, UI/UX, Testing, etc.)

• What role you’d like to take

• Why you’re excited to join EduLite

• Any previous projects or links you'd like to share

This is an open and inclusive project. We welcome contributors of all levels – from beginners to seasoned devs. Let's build the future of digital education together! 🌍

[smattymatty]

Hey, I am glad to see you created a Repo for this. My name is Mathew Storm, I go by smattymatty online. I have about 4 years working with Django professionally as a freelancer, I started off as a back-end only guy but lately have been branching out to front-end and making cool UI designs.

I very much agree with the goals of this project, to make education free, fair, and accessible to everyone around the world no matter their circumstance. I think we can create something really helpful for humanity if we try our best. I honestly don't have much free time (40hr full time job, and going to school part time, and working on my own business) , but I would certainly try to find the time to help with this.

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What Role am I looking for? - any role you're willing to give, any way I can help given my experience and passion.

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My skills include:

Python (6+ years, I love this language)

Django (4+ years, I love this framework and it's community)

Digital Ocean (4+ years, this is my hosting/cloud computing service of choice, I haven't used any other.)

UI design (2 years , I enjoy it but I'm not as good as I could be)

Tailwind, Vanilla Javascript, Vanilla CSS, HTMX, all that fun stuff.

TEACHING - https://youtu.be/2y8E2mBCQfI?si=38SyP3nE6k7AMRvP - I love teaching, one of my goals in life is to become a teacher (or professor?) , I love writing educational content, making slideshows, and helping people on their learning journey. That is why I am so excited about this idea.

Previous Projects:

Django Spellbook (my baby)

The project that I have been putting most of my time into, and am planning on starting a business around is django-spellbook

https://github.com/smattymatty/django_spellbook

https://django-spellbook.org/

I think our goals kind of line up with this project, I wanted to create an extremely LIGHTWEIGHT way for people to write and upload their educational content, notes, or blogs, into beautiful django html templates. The site can look very nice, but at the end of the day it's only .md files that you need to build it.

Some of my Teaching Material:

https://github.com/smattymatty/learn-webdev-django-htmx-1
https://github.com/smattymatty/learn-webdev-django-htmx-2

(OLD) Django-Tailwind-HTMX base

https://github.com/smattymatty/BaseApp-Django-HTMX-Tailwind

This is the base I used to use when making projects, it includes some pre-written javascript, some pre-written user models, etc.
I haven't used this in years, it probably needs a lot of updating.

My github Pages site

https://github.com/smattymatty/smattymatty.github.io

This is made entirely woth Vanilla HTML, CSS, and JAVASCRIPT. No frameworks involved.

This was mainly made to practice my front-end skills

[pandalow]

Hi, I'm Xiaojian Zhuang, also known as pandalow online (you can find me as pandloe on Discord).
I'm a graduate student from China, currently studying Software Design and Development.

I was deeply drawn to EduLite because it’s not just a great opportunity to sharpen my technical skills, especially in Django (which I’m currently learning), but also because I strongly believe in the power of education. As someone from China, I’ve seen how education can transform communities, uplift lives, and protect people from being marginalized. I truly believe that education is the key to long-term regional development — and that’s why I find EduLite’s mission both meaningful and inspiring.

About Me

My personal website: https://pandalow.github.io/
I have experience in Python, Java, and JavaScript, and have worked on a range of backend and frontend projects. Previously, I developed backend services using Spring Boot, and built personal websites and a chess game using React and Tailwind CSS.
Currently, I’m working on my thesis project focused on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and AI, using Hugging Face Transformers and PyTorch. I also have a background in product design, having worked as a UI/UX designer at a tech company in China.
At this stage, I’m able to dedicate 10 to 20 hours per week to open source contribution, and I’m excited to grow as a developer through hands-on collaboration with the community.

My skills:

Python – 1.5 years of experience
Java – 1 year of experience
Spring Boot – backend development (1 year)
Django – currently learning
React & Tailwind CSS – built UI for games and websites
Machine Learning / NLP – currently developing a multimodal sentiment analysis model
UI/UX Design – previous role as a product designer

Roles:

I'm most comfortable as a backend developer, but I’m open to contributing wherever needed. I'm excited to collaborate, learn, and grow with the EduLite team.

Previous Project

chatbot
A FastAPI-based Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) chatbot that responds to user queries using information from a structured resume.json file.
This project is integrated into my personal website.
Key Features:

• Built with FastAPI and supports frontend integration via CORS
• Utilizes Hugging Face embeddings and Chroma vector store for retrieval
• Includes rate-limiting to support safe and scalable deployment

course_hunter
A web application that allows students to explore university courses, view detailed course information, and read/write course ratings.

• Backend: Spring Boot providing RESTful APIs for course management, authentication, and rating features
• Frontend: Developed using React (Vite) and Tailwind CSS for a modern and responsive UI
• Data: MySQL for relational data storage and Redis for caching
• Security: JWT-based authentication with Spring Security

othello
A simple implementation of the Othello (Reversi) game using React and Spring Boot. Supports both two-player local games and single-player matches against a computer-controlled opponent.

• Frontend state managed with React Context (BoardContext)
• Backend logic implemented using the MiniMax algorithm with alpha-beta pruning
• No database required; the backend is purely logic-driven

ex-simple-search
an extremely simple search engine built with Spotify Annoy and SBERT Embeddings. It is designed for fast similarity search and is implemented using FastAPI.

django_server_demo
A practice project for learning Django by building a personal blog backend.

[smattymatty]

@pandalow

Hey, thanks for reaching out! I can tell you are very passionate about Education, and I fully agree with you on how important it is for regional development. I truly believe we can do something great for the world, for the people who need it the most, so I'm really happy to see how excited you are as well! Your experience is also impressive, I look forward to working with you, I'm sure we can learn a lot from each-other.

If you want to join the community, we usually talk on discord - https://discord.gg/phXnxX2dD4 - sharing ideas, resources, and brainstorming. We would love to have you, feel free to ask us any questions or tell us your ideas!

If you want to find something to work on, you can check the issues, leave a comment asking to be assigned it, fork/checkout a branch, etc. etc. If there are no issues that you want to work on, and you have an idea, you should be able to create an issue, but I recommend you talk to us in the discord about it first to make sure it's something EduLite can use.

Once again thanks for your message, your next step can be to join the Discord - https://discord.gg/phXnxX2dD4 - and introduce yourself to the community, and we can discuss what you can help with :D

[ibrahim-sisar]

Hi Xiaojian (pandalow),

Congratulations on being accepted into EduLite! 🎉
We’re truly excited to have you on board. Personally, I’m inspired by your passion for learning and your belief in the power of education — it deeply resonates with our mission.

Your view that education can transform communities aligns perfectly with the heart of what we do at EduLite. We don’t see programming as just writing code, but as a tool for real social impact — and you clearly embody that mindset.

Your broad skill set — from backend development to UI/UX and AI — makes you a valuable addition to our team. Even more impressive is your eagerness to keep learning, which is exactly what we value in our contributors.

We’ll start step by step together, and you’ll always have support as you grow with us. For now, feel free to join our communication channels, and we’ll coordinate with you soon on a first task that matches your interests and current Django learning journey.

Once again, welcome to the EduLite family!
Let’s build something meaningful together 💪

Warm regards,
ibrahim said abu al roos
Project Lead – EduLite

[johncosta]

Hi! I'm John Costa. I have a broad background in various technologies, primarily focusing on backend development or developer enablement.

While I currently have a full time role, I'm interested in volunteering some time to open source and noticed through onlydust.com that this project may be taking contributions.

• What role am I looking for?

I tend to gravitate toward backend development but I'm open to learning more about newer frontend development technologies if that's where the current need might be.

• Some skills include:

Web Development
Golang/Gin
Python/Django
Terraform
Docker

• Projects:

Projects/Professional experience can be found on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmcosta/

Thank you for your consideration!

[ibrahim-sisar]

Hi John 👋,

Thank you so much for reaching out and for your interest in contributing to EduLite through OnlyDust — we truly appreciate it!

Your strong background in backend development — especially with Golang, Django, Docker, and Terraform — brings a lot of value to our team 🙌. We're passionate about using technology for real impact, and it's great to connect with people who share that vision.

We currently have needs on both backend (mostly Django-based) and frontend sides, so your flexibility and openness to explore newer frontend technologies is definitely appreciated 🚀.

You're very welcome to join our team communication server on Discord:
🔗 https://discord.gg/eV4FmhBt

Once again, welcome to the EduLite family!
Let’s build something meaningful together 💪💙

Best regards,
Ibrahim Said Abu Al Roos
Project Lead – EduLite