TERM 3 REFLECTION

Well, creativity has begun.....I'm finding it quite fun, it's way more fun making things than sitting at a computer typing! And also I quite like crafty things( the lamp shade) and drawing(the activity-doodle art) . I've enjoyed looking at the montages and seeing what different people think is creative and we're all different so our ideas are different too! The most difficult part was probably glueing the kebab sticks onto the frame of the lampshade and finding something the right shape and height to sit it on while glueing. Overall I've quite enjoyed this unite called CREATIVITY.

Blackboard – how are you finding your way around it if you are new? What would you like to see in our new learning Environment which we will be working in from the beginning of next year. - I guess I'm not supposed to answer this because it says- IF YOU ARE NEW and I'm not recently new.

Now on to feedback and other's work!! Yep, the first thing i do when I get on blackboard is go and see if anyone's given me feedback on anything. I really like seeing what others think of my work! I also do read other people's work, sometimes before and after what I've done. I read them before if i don't quite know what I'm supposed to do so I get the idea.Then I read them after I've posted mine just out of curiosity to know what others stuck up. Reading other's work and getting feedback does help me know what to do, know how to improve, and know what the others thought the question meant.

SANDY...

If you're looking for my reviews of this week, just scroll down because I wrote about the English camp and the river after I wrote about this term's review.

English camp

we went to a school that has two rooms in it. There is one room for the 1-3 grade, and the other room is for the 4-6 grade. They live far out in a village(45 min from our house)so having foreigners teach them was a big thing! There are only 25 students at this school and so they only have a couple kids in each grade. For an example they only have 2 1st graders(they're brothers and are sOO cute! We taught them basic English like the numbers. We also did crafts with them. One day we made beaded hearts and the other day we made photo frames. We also played games with them like catching water balloons, using parachutes, making big bubbles, stacking cups, and making this Chinese jump rope out of rubber bands. i think the kids really enjoyed it, and so did us foreigners!

the river

We have a big dam here and the other day(when we had 17 people staying at our house), we went to a river that comes out of the dam. It was so fun because there are lots of rocks there, there's a little island in the middle that you can swim to, and there's a log that pokes out of the water that you can jump off. But the funnest part is that there are these rapids that you can go down. most of the river is rocky, but the rapid part isn't. There's this one big rock with heaps of slim and moss on it, on slide down this and when you come to this really foamy white part, you quickly try to move your body to the right so the rapids take you down the safer way. If you go down the wrong way(quite a few people did) then you come into the rocky part and you get bashed about the rocks a lot. Also when you go down this way, it is hard to stop yourself until you reach the sandy and more calm part of the river. You7 can go down these rapids by yourself or in a train. I went down it tons of times by myself, and tons of times with my older sister and her friend.(Her friend was part of the group that was staying at our house and came up to help teach English or this camp thing for two days) It's also fun to lie on the rocks and let the water sweep on over you, it's kind of like having a massage!

Feedback to those who write the resources....

If I were to give feedback to those who write the resources, I would say a couple of things. First of all I would say that I really liked doing those online games when you were actually running a business.(muffin bakery, fish shop) May be we could have a few more of these type of activities.

Sorry that this isn't very helpful but I can't really think of anything that we could have less of or what could be included.

Emma

How have the ENTERPRISE activities helped me?

I guess that doing those activities that Sandy mentioned in the Announcements have helped me with my business. But how? Well I guess they helped because they made me think about how big companies (Tip Top eg.) became so famous. Also that all big companies started off small but because they had a catchy slogan, or made a tasty product, or had good marketing skills, became bigger and bigger.

Before doing those activities I didn't really ever put much thought into how a business started. I guess I just thought that they just started and then that was that. But NO! There are lots of small things that you need to do or have in order to be successful. You have to have your products at the right price, you need a catchy slogan, to make enough money to make a profit, to have the right kind of advertisements, a business name that can be remembered easily.....these are only some things that you need!

our "calves"

On the left you can see a picture of my siblings' and my "calves"- that was when they were a lot younger. A couple of weeks ago though they were sent off to the butchers. Now we have made a lot of money with them. I bet there is some happy person in New Zealand now who has a yummy beef meal(s) to look forward to!

business ideas

There are a couple of things that I've noticed that could make Kalasin and Kamalasai better. (We live in Kamalasai which is a tiny town in Kalasin Province. Kalasin town is the closest bigger town to Kamalasai.) There is a need for a good supermarket in Kalasin. Also in Kamalasai it would be nice for an air conditioned cafe. It would also be good to have some safe family accommodation around here somewhere.

In Kalasin there already two "plazas." The reason why there are quotations around plaza is because you can hardly call them plazas. The older one has cracked tile floor, is grotty, and doesn't sell much other than milk powder and nappies. The other plaza has a tiny little supermarket grocery part. The floor space would be about 150 square metres and a good third of that would be devoted to skin care and toiletry products.

As you can probably see, there is a great need for a proper supermarket! The reason why no one's built a good one yet is because of one man. He owns a hospital , some other buildings, and the two plazas. If someone was to build a decent supermarket, he would lose his customers. Right now he is forcing them to go to his plazas, or make the long trip to another province. He is very rich and is able not to let anyone build a supermarket without his permission.- this is what I was told from a local person.

One major difficulty would be to get permission from this one man to build a supermarket. Another difficulty would be to employ good staff- there are lots of people who would like a job, but to get people who know what they're doing is another thing! Another difficulty could be getting enough money to buy land and then to actually build the building. To have enough customers will not be a difficulty at all!

Having an AC cafe in Kamalasai would be really nice because it is hot over here! It got up to 42.2 degrees C a couple of days ago. Also we need to keep drinking because of this weather, which is why we often go to cafes and get fruit drinks. There are lots of little two-room-and-a-toilet places (where one of the rooms is a shop front)for rent around here that we could use for a cafe. Getting a place to use isn't a difficulty!

Some difficulties might be getting enough customers to make a profit. Another might be buying ingredients cheaply, but still good quality. Also it may be difficult to get reliable staff to make the drinks.

There are lots of small accommodation places around here but they are all a bit sleezy and not suitable for families. When families come here to see the dinosaur footprints or whatever, they want to stay at a safe place.

One difficulty could be finding a good location. Another could be finding staff trained in hospitality. Or a possible difficulty could be having enough customers, but I doubt that this would be an issue.

goats!

During the holidays my brother had his birthday. His birthday present from my parents was a goat. However when we got to the farm to buy the goat and take it home, the man said that the get very lonely when by themselves. So we had to get TWO! I got a goat as well because I was the only sibling that didn't already have a pet of my own. (my sister shares it partially) My goat, Paivee(girl), is cream coloured and is 3 weeks old. Micah's goat, Peetu(boy), is brown and white and is 3 months old.

They are slowly getting friendly-er.
(PS I hope they don't explode from eating too many banana leaves 'cause they looovvveee them!)

Blackboard-it's ups and downs

Blackboard can offer interaction with people who are from, and live in different places other than where I live and am from. An example of this is that I live in Isaan, Thailand and am from Finland and New Zealand. Other people who do Blackboard live in New Zealand, Spain, or the United Arab Emirates and come from Thailand or New Zealand etc. Blackboard also gives feedback pretty quick compared to lets say, posting mail. I have sent lots of work(my booklets) ages ago, and I mean AGES AGO and have only received a few back. Another good thing about blackboard is that I can interract with English speaking people. The place where I live only has a couple foreign men. There are no foreign kids in this province, let alone foreign kids my age!
These are all good things about black board, but there are also some down sides. When you attach a piece of work, you can't actually open the the attachment to see if it's the right one(or if there is a way, I haven't found it yet!). Sometimes I send off the wrong attachments because of this. It would be nice if we could change or edit what we've done. For an example, if we accidentally put the wrong attachment, then the person who put up the work could go back and attach the right one. This is one thing that I especially like about this blogger site. Right now I can't think of any other thing that I would like to do with my online learning that black board doesn't do. If I think of anything, then I will put up my idea.

....naarak and poppy in my hammock...

Naarak and Poppy are sitting in my hammock. They are always so scared whenever they sit in the hammock because their little paws fall through the netting of the hammock.

my best work on bb

I think that my best work(s) were when I made the slide show about shell and frame structures and sketched the chedi. It was lots of fun doing these because I enjoy sketching and I sketched the different structures for the slide show, and sketched the chedi for the other activity. At the same time, though, it was challenging drawing the chedi because it had so many different layers/steps. It had quite a bit of detail, and because it was an ancient building it was crooked here and there and wasn't symmetrical. The slide show also was difficult in some areas for me because I am not very good at things to do with computers and techy stuff. After doing that activity I learnt that the more I do things, like working with computers, the better I get. Now I don't need help from other people as much as I used to when on the computer. Another thing that I learnt about myself is that I don't mind going off for a while and just being by myself and sketching.

The weather

One day it was 37 degrees celsius, the next day our family went to a friend's house and the gazebo blew over because of the wind, and the day after that it was so cool that I needed my bedspread on all night with no fan on- very unusual for this time of the year! Within a couple of days we had really hot, windy, and cool weather!

cutting down the bamboo poles

I am making a shelter or covering for a hammock. The hardest thing though was finding two trees that are the right length apart for a hammock. I needed four bamboo poles for my original plan for the shelter, (but when I was building it I realised I only needed two- things I make hardly ever turn out the way I plan them to be like). So yesterday during the heat of the day, a Thai lady , my sister, and I went out to the back of our section/field and cut down the bamboo poles that I needed. The hardest part was pulling the poles down after they'd been cut at the ground because there were so many leaves and branches twisted up at the top. Each time we managed to pull a branch down, a shower of big red ants would come down too. I was very lucky not to have been bitten, and very thankful too as their bites really sting! We were there for about 45 minutes. Today the temperature is about 36.5degrees Celsius and yesterday was about the same, if not hotter! When we came in after being outside, all of us were just dripping with sweat. The best part was that we went to the swimming pool in the next town (because there isn't one in our town), right after cutting down the bamboo!

a question for sandy..

i was just wondering why micah and i are in the southern on-liners when we've only ever been in the south island once. also all of my family and friends live in the north island.

My slide show

It was really hard making the sketch slide show, best of luck to anyone else who tries to put their own photos on a slide show like this! And I really do mean best of luck! Without my dad I would've never completed it.

A few tips on the slide show...

If you want to see the captions for the sketches, double click the slide show picture. This will take you to my google images acount.
Thanks
Emma

The dogs

The first thing you see when you come onto this site are the dogs! Well....they were a bit bigger than I originally wanted them to be, but ohh well.

Fish

I finally found out how to add other stuff like fish. It's cool how you can feed them! I intend to add some drawings or sketches of mine aswell. Seeya!

getting the blog started

It was pretty easy getting on to this blog as Micah had already done it and helped me get onto it.