Jonathan Field - Maker of Random Stuff

Monthly Archives: January 2014

The Scores Are In

I got a note from my friend Jabulane today. He’s a great computer teacher I met last year at Thalana High School. He has a day job teaching at another school away from town, but he teaches computers at Thalana on nights and weekends. I’ve seen him in class and I love his style with the kids – he is an inspiration.

The note was about the results for this year’s graduating class at Thalana — “matrics”, they’re called. He said that this year 72% of the computer students at Thalana got a passing grade in computer class. It had never been above 30% before.

To be clear, I had maybe a 1% influence on this. I only helped him get things up and running at the beginning of the year and then monitored a few classes for him. So it’s really just a testament to his teaching and the students’ effort to learn. However, it makes me happy and proud to have been a part of it at all.

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Prepping Up

I’ve got my longest trip yet scheduled for SA this year. I’ll be going for four months!

Some of you may note that this is in fact not allowed, as a South African visa is only good for 90 days. I am going to attempt getting around this by leaving the country for a week or so in the middle. I hear that works — I’ll let you know. Maybe I’ll take a trip to Germany with Andile to see some of her family up there.

It looks like I’ll be getting several visitors this year, too! My friends Lisa and Eric are coming for a week and a month, respectively. My friend Aki may try to join them. But wait, there’s more! A little later, my Dad is going to come for a visit as well! I’m quite excited.

I head out in a week. Right now I’m actually working on some software stuff – setting up a development server and a documentation wiki for World Possible.

Oh, a while back I threw together the video that’s on the front page there. It was for a fundraising push. The site needs a lot of work, which I’m dying to get to. But between the holiday travel, the dev stuff, and my upcoming trip it keeps getting pushed back. I wish I was better at finding and organizing people!

As usual, I’ve got lots of crazy plans for SA this year. I’ll describe some of them in a later post, though. Until then, hold your breath.

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