New Year 2019

Message for 2019: Please listen to science

Merry Christmas

The last newsletter of the year, number 2 of 2018, is available. It gives an interesting overview of the past year's activities. Click here to access it.

More than 200 000 pageviews

Thank you to all the readers of this website! 

It was a good feeling to observe that the number of pageviews exceeded 200 000 recently. Today it stood at 200 589.

Another interesting phenomenon is to see who the audience is. This picture shows where our readers are.

Best wishes and continue to enjoy hwscience.blogspot.com.

The amazing influence of drones and robots in Amazon's distribution centre

The future of deliveries will change completely when robots and drones are used more and more. The Wall Street Journal has recently published a very interesting article about Amazon's distribution centre in Baltimore, USA. 

The impact of human labour is getting less and less due to the amazing abilities of robots, drones, coding and computers. Is there a lesson in this for us in South Africa? We struggle so much with service delivery in general. Think water, electricity, delivery of your parcels and other mail, etc. Click here to go the page with interesting articles and follow the links from there. Alternatively, go straight from here to the article. You can read the original version here. In case it is not available, here is a printout of the article.

DBE, Siyavula and Sasol Inzalo Online Diagnostic Assessments

DBE, in partnership with Siyavula and the Sasol Inzalo Foundation, has developed an online platform for teacher diagnostic assessments in physical sciences (grades 10 to 12).

We have previously invited Free State teachers to take part in this, but now there is another opportunity to take part. Click here to read the circular from the DG of DBE, Mr H M Mweli, and click here to read the circular from the FSDE.

From these circulars you will see that:

• The assessments are focused on grade 10, 11 and 12 teachers.
• No data is needed for Vodacom and MTN subscribers.
• You can earn SACE professional development points (PDPs).
• The Free State has a target to reach until end of March 2019 and again for the end of March 2020.

What to do now? 

• Siyavula has asked for the contact details of all grade 10 to 12 physical science teachers.
• They will contact you by sms to enrol in the programme.
• Please use this opportunity for self-development as soon as you hear from Siyavula; it might even happen during the holidays. Best wishes and enjoy the experience!

Vacancy: Expo Provincial Coordinator (Northern Cape)

Somebody involved in Expo sent this to me. A vacancy exists for an Expo coordinator in the Northern Cape. Closing date is 19 December (I guess the 2017 is a typing error). Click here for more detail.