What's happening in your world?

[Farseer]

Well, we had rain here a couple of days ago and with it came a very abrupt cool, getting-ready-for-winter change. It's sunny and about 30 C at the moment, and I am FREEZING to the point where I can't get warm. I now also have an annoying, sniffly cold (thanks Change!), and I can't believe you all manage to survive with this as your maximum temperatures ever, let alone those in the negative ! Nuytsia, I should mention here that it's usually in the height of summer that I begin to think of edging south...4.5 degress your end makes me want to have a thorough re-think!

Years ago my kids and I corresponded with a class from Canada's Prince Edward Island and our idea of a barbeque was quite different from theirs...in their - 25 C winters they would cook all of their meat on a barbeque outdoors and, by the time they got it back inside to actually eat it, it would have refrozen and required thawing again!

Farseer: Schools of the Air are real? I always thought that was a myth they told us to make us feel better about going to a rural high school!

They sure are real, Lord Punctual, and very much a part of my life after thirteen years ! When we began, we used HF radios to correspond with our base school but now use telephone and the internet for On-Air lessons (despite previous posts talking up how technology has opened up our isolated lives, I was a fan of the radio and miss it very much !).

As many people get confused with Schools of the Air as they do with the thought that the RWC isn't a trilogy , with most believing that it is 'home-schooling". While the students do complete their schoolwork at home under the supervision of a parent/home tutor or governess (I have never had a governess !), the work is a firmly-set curriculum provided by the Education Department.

Each 'paper' or unit of work takes about a fortnight to complete and it is then mailed in to the base school for marking and monitoring/reporting purposes before being returned to the student. As well as these correspondence papers, the kids also have an 'On-Air lesson' for 45 minutes each day where they speak via the telephone/internet with their teacher and classmates in a lesson setting eg do Maths on Wednesday, Art on Thursday etc. Here's a link to our school if you'd like to know more http://www.longreacsde.eq.edu.au/index.html .

Glad you said all topics are relevant to this thread, Nuytsia !!