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Quote

Dear Teacher

It is greater work to educate a child, in the true and

larger sense of the word, than to rule a state

- William Ellery Channing

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The end of February 2020 means it is time for the second newsletter of the

year.

It was great to once again see most of the Business Studies and Accounting

teachers at the various conferences in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape,

Gauteng and Kwa-Zulu Natal. And to the APP teachers – pleased to meet

you! We hope all you enjoy the posters we handed out and once again

congratulations to the four winners of 3D Doodle pens! May you have many

hours of fun playing, building, creating and innovating! At Consumo our

motto is “Innovate to Educate and Educate to Innovate”.

But we believe that it is also crucial to be innovative in the classroom and

that is why our “newsletter theme” for the first half of the year will be “making

learning visible”. The benefits of this teaching and learning strategy are

involving kids in their learning (as opposed to them just sitting and listening),

forcing them to think about the content, integrating the theory with the world

outside the classroom and forcing them to do so.

If you are having a brake before we publish the next newsletter and the end

of March, rest well and be safe. If you have to wait a little longer for

the first school holiday of 2020, hang in there and know Consumo

will keep you company

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Smile … if you are a teacher

https://www.victorschools.org/academics/libraries/high-school/teacher-resources

Superpowers every teacher develops over time…

1 Bat-like hearing

2 A super accurate inner clock

3 X-ray vision

4 Spider-like webs of knowledge

5 Perfect patience

6 Amazing multitasking abilities

7 More arms than an octopus to get everything done on time

8 Creating additional hours in a 24 hour day

9 Better skills than a FBI handwriting analyser

10 A stand-up comedian and motivational speaker

11 The ability to create a learning opportunity from the most boring situation

12 The capability to teach despite a leaf blower or lawn mower or … being

operated right outside the window

13 And a million others … Thank goodness for TEACHERS!

__________________________________

https://za.pinterest.com/pin/70228075410660171/

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A fun activity in the Business Studies classroom … Creating Infographics is a great way to create deeper learning, as it is an inquiry

driven tool that makes learning visible. Almost any topic (in any subject) can be

transformed into an infographic.

Divided kids in groups and as the year progresses, each group will take responsibility

to create an infographic on the topic assigned to them. Here is an example of an infographic on

Influencer Marketing. They could however research the topic and come up with other formats of

infographics.

https://influencermarketinghub.com

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1. Two thermometers are identical in every respect, except that one has a spherical

bulb and the other cylindrical bulb of same volume. Which one is more sensitive?

Answer:

The thermometer with a cylindrical bulb is more sensitive.

For a body of a fixed volume, the surface area is least when it is spherical. Therefore,

the cylindrical bulb has a bigger surface area than the other one and hence absorbs

more heat in a given time compared to the other. So, the thermometer with cylindrical

bulb responds quickly.

2. Two persons ordered some tea in a cafe while waiting for a third friend. One of them

immediately poured tea in his cup and mixed cold milk with it. The other person

poured tea immediately but mixed cold milk after the friend arrived. Who drinks

warmer tea? – Explain.

Answer:

The person who mixes tea with cold milk before the arrival of their friend drinks

warmer tea.

Newton’s law of cooling can explain this. According to this law the rate of heat loss

from a hot body is higher if its temperature difference with the surrounding is higher.

Mixing of cold milk lowers the temperature of tea at the beginning of their wait.

Therefore, the temperature difference between this mixture and the surrounding is

less compared to the tea in other cup and hence this tea loses less heat in the same

time. As a result, this tea remains warmer.

APP brainteasers … because Consumo = fun 😊

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General Business Article

Customers are the breath and soul of business

2020-02-20 Mandisa Makubalo

Customer service is part of customer experience. These two disciplines are not the same.

It’s not just how you handle complaints, it’s about every interaction a customer has with

your business, from the second they goggle your business to when they buy from you and

beyond the sale. Every market is driven by the consumers, based on their needs, wants

and desires. Failing to put a customer experience strategy into place can cost your

business brand loyalty.

Huge companies already have a competitive edge, if small businesses want to run with

these big dogs, they must stay one step ahead of them by giving customers a reason to

choose them rather than these big companies.

From the ambiance of your place of trade, to customer service, to the navigability of your

website, the entire experience must be seamless if you want repeat business.

Always remember, customers are becoming increasingly demanding, one bad internet

review or a fry is grounds for complaints, or a refund today. Always give your customers a

fully integrated experience whenever they do business with you.

Word of mouth still happens, it’s just that virtual sharing is so much more far-reaching. Big

companies all have bad reviews but for a small business, especially a local one, a single

bad review could mean loss of dozens of customers

How to create an unbeatable customer experience:

Never view customer’s as a collective – look at the needs of the individual;

Excellent web design is a must. This means a responsive social website providing

information your customers can use;

Make great customer service a priority, give them contact method choices;

Market through social media, online directories, radio ads, print even promotional

products;

Give your customers a convenient opportunity to provide you feedback;

Review the feedback and make changes.

Remember it’s all about the customer, not you. First impressions are important, but so are

all of the customers!

https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Local/City-Vision/customers-are-the-breath-and-soul-of-business-20200219

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General Business Article

Businesses will fail without this

Lucy Desai Feb 26, 2020

CAPE TOWN – In South Africa, small to medium sized businesses are acknowledged as being

instrumental in driving the country’s market economy and employment rates. With unemployment

figures reaching 27.7 percent last year and the economy forecasted to grow just under two per

cent, the SME sector is viewed as their growth vehicle.

According to Ravi Govender, Head of Small Enterprises at Standard Bank, on average about 50

per cent of all start-up businesses in South Africa fail within two years due to the inexperience of

the owners, as well as a lack of resources to sustain.

SMEs can come with inherent risk — this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but SME companies with

smaller resources must adopt risk management and loss prevention measures to build a

sustainable enterprise by facilitating improved decision-making, as well as streamlined, efficient

processes. There’s a plethora of technology and services available to give small businesses the

upper hand. Here, we’ll explore the tools available to ensure SMEs have a greater chance to

succeed in South Africa.

Financial planning

A large proportion of start-ups are dependent on financial aid from family and friends. According to

research of 500 successful entrepreneurs across numerous sectors, one of the biggest challenges

that businesses are faced with is cash flow. At the core of all business …

Streamlined storage and ‘the cloud’

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last few years, you’ll have heard of ‘the cloud’. Storing it

in the cloud, moving it to the cloud, finding it in the cloud. Put simply, instead of storing your data on

one computer or one program, the cloud is …

Apps for productivity

Kudos to digital innovation, because again, it’s making business operations easier. As an SME

business owner, you’ll be no stranger to the stress of managing different tasks and projects

simultaneously. While you’re handling payroll, you’ll be making mental notes of the other day-to-

day management tasks all the while wondering how and what your staff are doing.

Communication is key. Productivity apps have been created to help delegate tasks …

Read the full article @ https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/entrepreneurs/revealed-businesses-will-fail-without-this-43450373

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General Science Article

Feb

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By Jacinta Bowler February 28, 2020

Dear Moon, we love you very much. For 4.51 billion years you've been a steady and true

orbital companion. So, with that in mind, please excuse us for a brief moment while we

absolutely freak out over the tiny minimoon we've just discovered looping around our planet.

Designated 2020 CD3, so far we know that it's likely a car-sized piece of carbonaceous rock,

and has been in orbit for about three years already. On February 24, the Gemini Observatory

in Hawaii took a beautiful colour photo of our new friend, with the 8-meter Gemini North

telescope.

(Gemini Observatory/NSF's NOIARL/AURA/G. Fedorets)

Combining three images with different filters, the picture shows our little minimoon as the spot

in the centre of the image, with the colourful stars blurry around it. It looks this way because

the minimoon was being tracked over the sky; as the camera moves, the stars (which don't

move as much) blur.

Alas, our new tiny friend will not be around forever. "Obtaining the images was a scramble for

the Gemini team because the object is quickly becoming fainter as it moves away from Earth,"

explains Gemini Observatory astronomer John Blakeslee. "It is expected to be ejected from

Earth's orbit altogether in April."

Although it might be too late for us to become further acquainted with little 2020 CD3,

researchers think there are many more of such minimoons out there – we just need to find

them. "We expect to find a population of these objects once the Rubin Observatory is

operational," said Grigori Fedorets, the lead astronomer for the Gemini observations.

"Stay tuned!"

https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-our-cute-little-minimoon-in-colour/amp

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General Science Article

Astronomy student discovers 17 new planets, including

Earth-sized world

28 February 2020 University of British Columbia

Sizes of the 17 new planet candidates, compared to Mars, Earth, and Neptune. The planet

in green is KIC-7340288 b, a rare rocky planet in the Habitable Zone.

Credit: Michelle Kunimoto

University of British Columbia astronomy student Michelle Kunimoto has discovered 17

new planets, including a potentially habitable, Earth-sized world, by combing through data

gathered by NASA's Kepler mission.

Over its original four-year mission, the Kepler satellite looked for planets, especially those

that lie in the "Habitable Zones" of their stars, where liquid water could exist on a rocky

planet's surface. The new findings, published in The Astronomical Journal, include one

such particularly rare planet. Officially named KIC-7340288 b, the planet discovered by

Kunimoto is just 1 ½ times the size of Earth—small enough to be considered rocky, instead

of gaseous like the giant planets of the Solar System—and in the habitable zone of its star.

"This planet is about a thousand light years away, so we're not getting there anytime

soon!" said Kunimoto, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of physics and astronomy. "But

this is a really exciting find, since there have only been 15 small, confirmed planets in the

Habitable Zone found in Kepler data so far."

The planet has a year that is 142 ½ days long, orbiting its star at 0.444 Astronomical Units

(AU, the distance between Earth and our Sun) - just bigger than Mercury's orbit in our

Solar System, and gets about a third of the light Earth gets from the Sun.

Of the other 16 new planets discovered, the smallest is only two-thirds the size of Earth—

one of the smallest planets to be found with Kepler so far. The rest range in size up to

eight times the size of Earth.

Read more @ https://phys.org/news/2020-02-astronomy-student-planets-earth-sized-world.amp

Feb

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Petrol theme

It’s official: Budget Speech confirms we’ll be paying more

for fuel

by Dan Meyer 2020-02-26 Finance, News

After relief in March, drivers will again have to fork out more for fuel after the announcement of an

increase during the Budget Speech. We might not have to pay more tax, but Tito Mboweni

confirmed during his Budget Speech that we will have to fork out more of our monthly incomes on

fuel.

The finance minister has proposed to increase the general fuel levy by 16 cents a litre and the

Road Accident Fund (RAF) levy by 9 cents a litre from 1 April 2020. That makes for a total of 25c

on a litre of fuel.

He said the increase came as a result of inflation, as well as the accumulating liabilities of the

embattled RAF. “To adjust for inflation, the fuel levy goes up by 25 cents per litre, of which 16

cents is for the general fuel levy and 9 cents is for the Road Accident Fund levy. “Despite this

increase, the liabilities of the RAF are forecast to exceed R600 billion by 2022/2023. We need to

take urgent steps to reduce this risk to the fiscus and bring about a more equitable way of

sharing these costs. “One option is to introduce compulsory third-party insurance.”

Fuel prices are set to drop in March, however the proposed levy increase will come as agonising

news to drivers.

For every litre of fuel you fill up with, R5.59 goes to taxation, of which R3.61 forms part of the

general fuel levy and R1.98 is claimed by the RAF, meaning that despite the burden of inflation,

South African consumers are still paying a hefty share towards taxation. The RAF recently

announced that victims can claim double what they previously could.

According to a Government Gazette, the RAF has stipulated that claimants can claim a maximum

of R289 957 for loss of income, compared to the previous R160 000 limit. The Road Accident

Benefit Scheme (RABS) Bill is currently being debated in the National Assembly and is being

touted as a replacement for the current system, cutting out third-party legal fees through a direct

claim process.

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/finance/how-much-will-south-africans-pay-for-petrol-budget-speech-2020/

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Petrol theme – International news

Petrol Price Changes for March 2020

David Taylor Feb 28th, 2020

Here are the petrol price changes for the month of March 2020.

Due to the corona virus, international petrol prices suffered one of their steepest plunges. This

means that there's some good news on the cards for SA motorists. According to the

Automobile Association (AA), "The impact of the novel coronavirus outbreak on global

economic activity cannot be over-stated, and petroleum prices have retreated in lockstep with

the downturn across world markets," the AA says.

Despite the SA Rand suffering against the US Dollar, the AA is predicting a decline of between

9 and 19 cents a litre are on the cards for petrol, and 55 cents a litre for diesel.

Sadly, due to the budget speech and subsequent currency degradation, motorists should

prepare for increases on the horizon. "It is difficult to predict where current events might lead

us. The Rand has not found strength against the US dollar since Finance Minister Tito

Mboweni's budget speech, and the consensus of economists is increasingly that South Africa

is set to lose its last remaining investment grading before long," the AA said.

https://www.cars.co.za/motoring_news/petrol-price-changes-for-march-2020/48312/

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Consumo resources… and so much more!

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consumopublishers@gmail.com

Estie and Zain

The Consumo Team

We believe in “Innovate to Educate and Educate to Innovate”.

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