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Dear Parents / Guardians Salaamun Alaikum The annual BBQ/Sports Day concluded the first half of an exciting year so far. Alhamdulillah, an estimated 600-650 people (students, teachers, and parents) attended the day, we were blessed with sunshine, the activities ran clockwork, and the BBQ was delicious. What more could one ask for? Thank you all for your support as always.
We are on a continuous basis keeping you abreast of the developments at SIM and hence I am here not going to elaborate on the activities and performance, but it is sufficient to say that we are en course along the direction as set out at the beginning of the year. For that, I am extending appreciation to all and pray that The Almighty grants you Tawfeeq for all your efforts in His cause. However, before you all sign off to go on your summer break, I would like to brief you on two noteworthy developments. One positive piece of news to be shared is that we have now been provided with additional space resource, in form of the porta-cabins that have been brought into the centre. These will be at our disposal as we return in October and this will indeed assist us in our class allocation and enable a more comfortable teaching and learning environment. With the current number of porta-cabins, we will have an extra 5 classrooms at our disposal. We extend our appreciation to the EC for facilitating this. Secondly, I would like to spend a few lines on the new IT Platform, about to transform certain operations within SIM. This platform, SIMOSS – SIM’s Collaboration and Virtual E-learning environment, will open up doors to take SIM to the next level. Following its introduction and inception, SIMOSS will aim to become part and parcel of the students’/parents’/teachers’ life on an ongoing basis. This system per se is probably going to be a ground breaking one in the Khoja Madaris world. At the outset of 2008, this was one of our top priorities for this year and Alhamdulillah we have reached a stage where it is currently being piloted. The system is going to make internal procedures more effective and efficient, and enhance the external facilities, services and communication. Amongst others, it will allow us to provide Virtual / e-Learning, complementing the current teaching, and in addition enable us to bring in other and additional elements. The aim is to launch some elements of the system in the very near future and then gradually increase both the usage as well as the uptake. We are in a very fortunate position to have a system of this nature in place. A lot of time, effort, and money has been invested in setting this up. However, the success of it will to a large extent depend on how we all – admin/teachers/students/parents - buy in to the system and use it to its optimum. On that note, I wish you all have a superb summer break. Also, please do remember each other during the holy nights and days of Rajab, Sha’ban, and Ramadhan. S&D Shafique Govani Principal SIM (Please note that the SIM calendar says Big Quiz on the 5th of October, the day SIM resumes after the summer break and Mahe Ramadhan. This is an error and it will be a normal teaching day.) |
