2021 Magazine

109 2021 | Edition No. 24 | TECHNOLOGY Mujaahid Salie and Camryn Abrahamson Technology has never before played such a crucial role in everyday school life like over the past year. With this increase in daily technology use, we decided to in- troduce BITS representatives whose purpose is to help students as well as teach- ers with technology. This initiative has been received well. We made sure to equip these representatives with the necessary skills on a training day. The year started off with the New Learner Device Orientation where we helped new learners become accustomed to their new devices and assisted the learners in using them effectively. Our biggest challenge of the year? Every Friday was assembly - an assembly that needed to be livestreamed. We were lucky enough to have Mr Philander guide us, as well as an amazing team to ensure that assembly runs smoothly. We have learnt a lot and have been able to teach those in our team too. We are grateful for all the opportunities and for the privilege of working in such a well-resourced environment. SERVICE Tayla van Wyk and Milena Fieggen The Service Portfolio has been fortunate to remain operational during the COVID-19 pan- demic. Many volunteer events, drives and other activities were still possible while follow- ing COVID-19 protocols. We began with Inter- act’s Pink Bake Sale, the proceeds of which were do- nated to the Change Makers Hub. We then conducted multiple beach clean-ups hosted by various service clubs. The beach clean-ups were a big success, with parents and past learners participating as well. Exter- nal activities were also held, with the Service Prefects advertising and collecting items for community organi- sations. Movember, Sunflower Day, Children’s Men - tal Health Week, Earth Day and Autism Awareness Day are some of the initiatives promoted through the Service Portfolio. The Service Portfolio aims to give back to our community in every way that we can. We are most proud of Interact, who received international recognition from Rotary for the work they’ve done. We know that we are very blessed to be at a school like Parklands and love to see how our learners open their hearts and minds to those less fortunate. SPORT Anika van der Walt and David Wood With official sport on hold for the last year due to the pandemic, we were extremely excited to be able to continue with a revised sport programme this year. To ensure the safety of our learners, external matches were not allowed and that is why we came up with the idea of introducing the Parklands Pro League - an internal sports league where our learners were able to play matches against each other. In addition to this, we introduced weekly highlight videos which featured sports train- ing, Pro League matches and other sporting highlights at the College. A memorable event was to welcome Laura Wolvaardt, Protea Women’s Cricketer, to our Sports Assembly! We are grateful that we got the chance to be creative in our port- folio and to let our passion for sport be the driving force behind the year that was 2021. We are proud to have led this team and it has been an honour to serve the school.