The major concern in my neighbourhood is booze and smokes. Chuck can get smokes but they are Zimbabwean, Brandon doesn't mind any smokes as long as they are toasted. Marlon can get Marlboros at twice the price, Nancy is interested. My biggest concern is my whiskey stash. As it turns out I over catered for three weeks – I am left a little lacking for the next two weeks. Brandon needs red wine and doesn't drink whiskey or whisky. Chuck doesn't drink whisky but is short of beer and white wine. I have a little red wine and have begged another five bottles of white wine from my mother, I have enough beer. Deals are struck and trades are made. I should have stocked up on smokes – they are a great currency at the moment, made even greater by the fact that I don't smoke. My new colleague Mark has sixteen bottles of whisky (I do prefer whiskey though) about 10km away from me – I am desperately trying to get him declared an essential service.
I knew when the lockdown began that the world had changed and will never be the same. I have a meeting three days a week on Zoom with my colleagues – this included Monday which was a public holiday. I am meeting people who work for the same group of companies as I do that I've never met before. Truth is I may never meet them formally but will have developed a relationship with them over the ether. In fact, I feel that we as a group of people have become a lot closer as we work together to steer our various businesses through this process. It has been a case of extreme reinvention and tireless work from a variety of educators, developers, marketers and part time copywriters (me). The advantage of Zoom meetings is they are shorter, to the point and you don't get a good enough chance to get up each others' noses.
It might be day 21 for me, but it's day 28 for my kids. They had three weeks of school before the holidays started in early April. The school had been very good about getting lessons onto Google Classrooms, there were Zoom classes. The only issue was the parental supervision. Both parents in this house are working, both are trying to keep businesses afloat.
My kids are on holiday and the other schools are now back and classes need to continue. The basic education department has launched lessons online. It's a laudable effort – coming from someone who firmly believes that this government is irreparably inept. It's more than laudable – it shows a proactivity that you just wouldn't expect from the government. It bodes well for the future. The problem I have right now is that it is very slow, and I am on fibre. Vodacom offers free lessons has a school, which they say is free for Vodacom customers.
But this post is not about that – it's about DigiCampus. This is post about one of the companies in the group of companies that I represent. Unlike other online teaching programmes – which is typically a push model, DigiCampus was developed by respected educators. It uses real teachers at the best schools to provide lessons in English, Afrikaans, isiZulu and isiXhosa (thus far). There is a portal where students/learners can keep their education programmes in a central place. It's a portal. You select your subjects and they are on your portal – you don't have to go and sift through videos that you may have watched before. And this is the start – they are looking at peer review models and other types of learner/teacher interaction. Already subscriptions are over 6000 – and the programme was launched on Tuesday (not many people didn't work over the Easter weekend). If you have kids at school at the moment and would like to know what it would be like to be taught by teachers from Grey College and Pridwin Prep and many others (you can see most of the others here) then you get a good feel by registering here and taking a look. I would be very interested to know what you think of the experience, we are all learning here. What we do know is that learning will never the same again.
A full DigiCampus prospectus can be downloaded here
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