Financial & Travel Musings

We’ve just moved the two little guys to a new school so are settling into a whole new range of school customs.

One of the most striking is the difference in the assumptions about how responsible the kids going to the school are. In their previous school, basically the assumption seemed to be that they had to be led everywhere so every morning they had to be taken to the door of their classroom, helped to take their coats off, and generally assisted to organise their arrival into the classroom. In this one, everyone from P1 through to P7 starts off in the playground then they line up at the spot for their class before following their teacher into the school thus all that parent assistance isn’t there.

That playground assembly practice in turn creates a totally different atmosphere in that the head master and all the teachers are out in the playground in the morning and indeed in the afternoon when the kids are getting collected. The big difference there is that the head master is around and much more approachable whereas in their previous school the principal had, as she put it, other things to do. Presumably their current head master also has those other things to do but his presence in the playground highlights what seems a different attitude and approach ie that he’s responsible for the kids primarily and if they’re all outside then that’s where he should be too.

Popularity: 1% [?]

For the first time in a long time I find that I’m finishing off a number of courses at pretty much the same time.

First to go was Human Biology (SK277) which I really miss doing as it was a really, really interesting course. It was far from being an easy course for me as it was my first ever biology course but the fascination more than made up for that and I ended up getting through the course books much faster than expected.

This week I posted off the final assignment for the Investigative Biology (SXR270) summer school. They’re an odd breed of course as they basically only take up a couple of weeks of your life but have such an intensity that it can take a month or two to wind down from them.

Coming soon is the final assignment for the Astronomy (S282) course which seems to be taking forever to do. I’m really dreading the exam for that but then so are a lot of people so perhaps it’ll work out fine in the end.

Alongside that I’m well into the assignment for the Planets course (S196) which I should get away sometime in the next week or two.

By the time I’ve that lot done “all” I’ll be doing is the revision for the astronomy exam which is in mid-October so, all being well, I’ll understand it much better than I do now. And the Molecules, Medicines and Drugs course (SK185) which is just as fascinating as the human biology one was so chances are that I’ll finish it well before the end January deadline.

As this should leave me with a bit of a lull in activity I’m toying with fitting in another course, probably the one on fossils which is in its last run this year and sounds both easy and interesting.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Finding a decent online school isn’t so easy as you would think as there are heaps of fly-by-night outfits out there aiming to take your money from you.

The problem basically is that you’ve no way to judge which Online Schools are going to be the best for you. You might think that, as a first cut, the big names would be the ones to go for but that’s not necessarily the case as they’re more geared up towards serving onsite students and may not work nearly so well in dealing with online students.

Thus you need to take account of comments and ratings by students who’ve already taken courses with the various schools. Since online education is a relatively new affair you need to bias your consideration of those comments much more so to recent years too.

Popularity: 1% [?]