Over to You

We added a forum to our Extra Tuition Centre site today. When I was growing up I used to read about forums in Ancient Rome. My reading was all to do with gladiators and lions and fights to the death.

In one way it is heartening to think that our forum will not cover topics about fighting and death. We are offering topics related to children, parents and how children learn. Our gladiators are Mauro – a computer genius. He listens carefully, speaks little and delivers the goods. He understood all about the languages behind the forum. What an eleven plus candidate he must have been! There was also Jonathon who has put our new web site together. Jonathon explained that our new website now covered over 90 pages. He designed the site and basically told us what to do. Then we are lucky to have Pinar. It is quite clear that she is a forum guru. She mentioned that she has made over 5000 posts to forums that interest her. Surely all those years ago Pinar must have been a super gladiator.

I must confess that I have never made a posting to a forum before today. I know that a blog is one form of a forum. But this blog is different – it is simply personal thoughts. It looks as if a forum engages in more than a chat. There are all sorts of forums to do with personal interests. There are also forums set up to promote awareness of issues.

Our forum has a moderator – in our case Pinar. She will monitor the threads that develop. At this stage we have no idea of the way our forum will develop because the content is not prescribed by us. As I understand it, the nature and intent of a forum is that conversations and discussions develop according to the users.

Anyone can start a new discussion or thread – or comment on an existing thread. As an organisation we have been established around 30 years. In that time we have been aware of many changes in education. We have been asked an extraordinarily wide range of questions. It is quite remarkable how few parents have felt the need to criticise their schools and teachers. Parents are remarkably resilient – and in the end all parents want is the best possible for their child. We are looking forward to seeing what develops.

All we can hope is that the hard work by Mauro, Jonathon and Pinar serve to stimulate and enrich. If we can achieve this we will have satisfied a major objective.