Notes from the General Manager - Diane Jacoutot:Imagine the shock of the pupils at Deptford Green School in South London on Wednesday this week, when they were told to ‘face the front and pay attention’ during the presentation of yet another guest speaker. And in walked Bill Gates. Who proceeded to talk to them for an hour about dropping out of Harvard to start Microsoft, about making not millions, but billions. And then, more importantly, about giving it away. 26 billion of it, and counting.
As a Closet Geek, I love the fact that a bunch of teenagers from a deprived area of South London instantly know who Bill Gates is. I suppose a few hundred billion dollars will do that, but still. The guy is not a rock star. He doesn’t even have his own line of trainers. (To be fair they would probably not be all that stylish so maybe this is a good thing) He still has a pencil neck and even at 50 looks like a nerd, yet he’s instantly recognisable and widely admired. I love that.
As someone who started her working career at IBM in the 80s, who learned how to type with all 10 fingers so I could flirt with my husband-to-be over the mainframe using a rudimentary pre-cursor to Instant Messaging, and who can make the sound of a modem as it connects (my party trick), I bask in the reflected glow of his geekiness.
Today is a big day for the geek in me for another reason. It is the Big Unveiling the new improved Teachanywhere website! This website has been over a year in the making and it was not written by some faceless marketing team toiling in gray cubicles, but by Rachel, our marketing coordinator and researcher, and by me. Then it was put into beautiful internet form by our talented web design team, spearheaded by Ross the Magnificent, as I call him. It has new features I’ve been dreaming up for quite a few years now and which have finally become a reality. Amongst them, you will find that you can now set up job alerts for a particular region, subject and level and it will email you the results daily, weekly or monthly. You will find the Regional and country pages have been extended so that you can find out the typical temperature range from Singapore to Spain and what there is to do in Kuwait on the weekends. It will suggest countries that are similar to the countries you are reading about – which you might want to also consider. You will even be able to read what other teachers have said about the region – something we hope to extend as time goes on.... with your help of course. And of course the whole thing looks a bit more flash. Literally.( Sorry, that was a nerd joke and I apologise).
Please have a nose around – Rachel and I have written it with you in mind. The idea, as I wrote on the landing page of the new regional section, is that the best international teachers need to be the best learners. There are things you really need to research and know about going abroad and we aim to give it to you. Such is the beauty of the internet. Even if the Geeks won’t inherit the earth, at least we can write about it and present it to you with our technological prowess.
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