Shaw Academy Review

Earlier this year I took two courses through Shaw Academy. I'd never heard of them before, but through Daddy's Deals I purchased two courses for R19 each. I was readily willing to pay that to try their courses, even if it turned out to be terrible, I'd only lose R40.

The courses I took were 'Diploma in Blogging and Content Marketing', and 'Introduction to Photoshop'. They were both very interesting. Since I only purchased courses and not a subscription, I won't be talking much about the Membership side of the site. 

After buying the deal and receiving the voucher, you go onto the website to redeem it and register for your course/s. 

Registering:

When you register for the courses you get to chose which session you would like to attend. I think that you usually get two options that are in two months. For example, if you bought your course in March you can choose to do your course in April or May. Once you begin the course you have just over a month to complete it if you're not a member. 

Classes:

Once you have registered, there are classes to attend twice a week for around an hour each time. The lectures are live and you can ask questions during the lesson. The lecturers are usually happy for you to email them questions as well or you can request a call. 

If you can't attend the online lectures when they are streaming, you can watch all the lessons in your own time after they have been recorded and uploaded to your student area. They become available to you within about 24hrs. 

Assignments, quizzes and the final exam:

Depending on the course, you usually have some quizzes or assignments to complete. These help to prepare you for the final exam. The final exam is a 100 question multiple choice test. If you aren't a member there is a 5 Euro (about R80 when I did it) fee to take the test and get your certificate emailed to you. Unless you are a member you can only take the exam once. At the introduction level, the exams aren't too difficult if you pay attention so this isn't too problematic. 

In some courses, such as the introduction to Photosop course, the teacher sometimes gives optional assignments that you can submit for their review or to show off your newly acquired skills :) 

The lecturers quite often bring students examples into the lesson. This is quite nice as you can get free critique and see what others have accomplished.

Lecturers:

The lecturers that I had were awesome. They sounded interested in the material and were happy to answer questions. The thing that amazed me with Shaw Academy is the willingness of the lecturers to help you. They would remind you of their email addresses and that you could send them questions, and they both tried to call me at least once from the UK (where they are based) during the respective courses to see how I was finding the course, ask if I had any questions, and to let me know of membership deals. When I didn't manage to answer the calls they emailed me to let me know that they had tried to call me and why. 

The whole experience was pleasant. The only thing that I found slightly annoying was the continual reminding of the special deal for membership. I also found the tests slightly disappointing. The reason was that although the website and courses seemed fairly profesional and well run, during the test there were a large number of spelling mistakes and weirdly constructed sentences, most of which could have been corrected by just reading through all the questions carefully to check for mistakes before using them. 

So in short,

Pros:

Can get cheap courses

Good lecturers

Support

Flexibility of recorded lessons

Cons: 

Short time frame

Paying extra for the exam and certificate

Spelling errors in tests

If you get a deal on a course that you're interested in, go for it! If you love it you can go back again and again, or buy a membership deal for more great short courses.

The Bible In 9 Days

This year I am doing a program through a local church. It is a year of serving and loving the city, getting the church involved, and showing them that they can live missional lives even if they are busy and that they don't have to be missionaries far away to do it.

The first thing we did this year as a team was to read through the Bible. I was really excited for this. I have set out before to read through the bible from beginning to end, but hitting a lot of geneology a few books in took the excitement out of that plan somewhat. 

Having a set aside time to do it and other people to do it with helped a lot. Doing it alone requires even more self discipline than when you have other people along side you struggling through the same exhaustive lists in Numbers. 

We had an audio version that we listened to as we read. This kept us at a steady pace, had us all at the same section at the same time, and had us taking the Word in through two senses. This was also helpful when you got lost or distracted as though I can't honestly say I have read every single word of the Bible, I have heard it all. 

If I remember correctly, the audio Bible is 75 hours long. We split it up into sessions like this:

8:00 -9:30

15 minute break

9:45-11:15

15 minute break

11:30-13:00

45 minutes for lunch

13:45-15:15

15 minute break

15:30-17:00 

15 minute break

17:15- 18:45

Finished for the day

On the ninth day we had to do a few sessions in the morning only but I can't remember how many or how long they were as we changed it up a little bit that day. 

It was a lot more tiring than I expected. It was also harder to concentrate than I anticipated, even in the New Testament where it seems like there is a lot more to take in than some of the Old Testament books that had more facts than things you got distracted thinking about. This was also a challenge, not having time to think on a particular scripture too long, but continuous reading. To be honest, I did fall asleep a few times...

However, it was very interesting to read through the Bible in a short period of time. I found it fascinating to see things like how Jacob had his name changed by God to Israel and that name was used for the tribe of Israel, God's chosen people; how Jacob's sons names were used for the 12 tribes of Israel through the Bible and how this thread carries on into Revelations. 

If you'd like to read through the Bible too but don't have a number of whole days to set aside there are some plans here: http://therebelution.com/blog/2014/12/reading-gods-worda-new-years-resolution-for-the-rebelution/  that are for a few months or for a year and this site: http://www.howlongdoesittaketoreadthebible.com/  can give you an idea of how many minutes a day you have to read to finish it within your time frame.

I would encourage you to read God's word in it's entirety.