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Turning a table
In Ancient Greece, Plato used the idea of a table to discuss the philosophical notion of form. This table, however, is much more practical – it was built by Grade 8 students at Good Hope, a school in rural Zambia that George used to teach in. Makes my Garfield penholder I made at a similar…
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Back to Simakakata
Here’s the post I’ve written for LearnAsOne explaining the next few days. “Season’s greetings and a happy new year. For those of our supporters who’ve been stuck in northern Europe’s coldest winter for decades, my commiserations. I’ve been away in South Africa visiting relatives for the festive period, and have been slowly baking away in…
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Supporting the students
That’s all of them – not just the ones in the UK right now. I feel utterly remiss that the two biggest stories of the year – Wikileaks and the student protests – are going on while I’ve been either preparing for a long trip abroad or while I’m on it. I’ve all the protests…
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Calling Zambia
I’ve got a call booked with George at Simakakata school for first thing tomorrow morning. The subject – my impending return to the country. Looking forward to that a lot.
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Playtime at Simakakata
Not many of the kids at Simakakata could speak English, even though it’s the Zambia’s official lingua franca. The language of tomfoolery is universal though. This very quickly became a favourite playtime game.
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An interview with George
I had a lovely conversation with George, the headmaster from Simakakata, last week about the progress made on the school there. It only took five calls and two international providers to get a clear line, but when we did manage to talk, he filled me in on a lot of things that have been going…
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First classroom fully funded!
A long and difficult day travelling down to Shoreham in the rain was broken up by a bit of good news from Steve, the founder of LearnAsOne who I accompanied to Zambia back in May. Thanks to some fantastic work involving cake sales, sponsored walks and skydiving, amongst other stuff, he’s now just £130 £35…
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Has Twitter changed online video?
The random thought for today is about online video. It’s been around for ages, obviously, but I’ve never been a fan. I can count the number of times I’ve visited YouTube’s homepage, rather than just following a link, on one hand, and have always been deeply skeptical of friends who go off to set up…
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George’s story
Apologies for the lack of posting lately – I’ve been pretty much off for a week with some odd throat infection. I’ve finally managed to get part of George’s story up on LearnAsOne though, which I’m incredibly happy with. He’s literally one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met: I wouldn’t be surprised if…
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New donations page up
Still busy catching up on work, but finally managed to do something useful for LearnAsOne to follow up on the Zambia trip. Steve’s sorted out a project page on the meta-charity site GlobalGiving in time for its UK launch. The site has been a huge success in the US – it works the same way…
