User:Vilimaka

Today's date : 27 August 2024

= My profile  =

You can call me Vili. I am from Tonga, and I am currently living with my family in Suva, Fiji. I am male, and I always feel uncomfortable telling others about my age. I am currently an educator, but I have done many odd jobs such as washing dishes in a restaurant, delivering pizza, shopkeeping, washing laundary, delivering newspapers, selling flags, cutting copra, and well as working as a cargo ship deckhand.

My family consists of my wife Katarina, our daughter Lynette, 2 dogs Lassie and Buddy, and our cat, Pus. My wife is from Kiribati and is also an educator. Before we moved to Fiji from Tonga, she was an Education Officer with Tonga's Ministry of Education. She is currently working for the University of the South Pacific as an Education Technologist. My daugther Lynette, is a 4th year Law student.

Just a glimpse of where I come from. I grew up in a villiage in Tongatapu (Tonga's main island) called Vaini (also known as Hufangalupe) which is about 9 miles from Tonga's capital Nuku'alofa. Tonga has 5 main groups of islands, and I've visited only 2 of them: Vava'u, which is a beautiful rugged island to the north of the main island, is where tourists swim with whales, and Ha'apai which a chain of volcanic islands that make up central Tonga. My first trip to a country outside Tonga was to Fiji in 1986.

Here in Fiji, I live with my family in a Suva surburb called Nasese which is only 3-5 minutes drive to central Suva. Nasese is just along the Suva seawall and facing the beautiful Beqa Island, the island of the firewalkers.

I am providing some recent photos from both Tonga and Fiji.

Professional background
I have been a teacher for almost 20 years. I started teaching in 1991 at Tonga College (also know as 'Atele), an all-boys government-owned secondary school in Tonga, where I taught General Science, and Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate(PSSC) Biology and Chemistry. In 1995, I was transeferred to the Tonga National Form 7 where I taught New Zealand Bursary Biology and Chemisrty. While at these two institutions, I was also involved in both national (Tonga) and regional (Pacific Islands) assessment activties such as the setting and moderation of examinations. In addition, I was also involved in writing science curriculum materials for Tongan secondary schools.

I am currently working at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, as a teacher educator. Below are some photos of my students.

Education
Received both my primary and secondary education in Tonga. I have a BSc degree with a double major in Biology and Chemistry from the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, and a Graduate Diploma and MSc in Science Education both from Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia. I am now dreaming of doing doctoral studies preferably in science learning design using multimedia.

Professional

 * 1) Teaching science using models.
 * 2) Reflective and critical pedagogies.
 * 3) The use of multimedia in online learning environments.
 * 4) Online learning.
 * 5) Intercultural research.

Personal

 * 1) Talking with my family: I love chatting with my wife and daughter.
 * 2) Gardening: I plant fresh vegetables for my family and help maintain our family flower garden.
 * 3) Feeding my dogs.
 * 4) Online social networking - meeting friends and family online. Most of the photos on this page are from my online network hosted by MyFamily.com. This network is special for us, the people of Ma'afuof Tonga. We meet online with friends and relatives from the United Kingdom, USA, China, Australia, New Zealand, and Tahiti and plan communty projects for our people back in Tonga. So far, we've been very successful: we've provided furnitures (desks, chairs, writng materials) and equipment (lawn mowers, photocopy machines, etc) to our village primary school. The water supply and bathrooms for staff and students of the primary schools were upgraded by our members from LA, USA. Members from Chicago provided sports gear and equipment. Our members from Utah donated new computers to the village's Methodist secondary school.
 * 5) Watching rugby - union of course!
 * 6) I also like collecting photographs that show the effects of climate change.
 * 7) Travelling - anywhere, but my favourite destinations are the Pacific Islands.

My wiki projects

 * /Transparent Rings Atomic Model/
 * /The Periodic Kingdom: 3D-Periodic Trends/
 * /Climate change and the Pacific Islands/


 * I registered for eL4C41, a Learning4Content workshop to learn wiki skills.

== My optional community service (learning contract) project  ==

My Sandbox
Where I practise new wiki skills

Been a busybee lately! My sandbox has the following Flickr image - Honeybee on Veronica



My most helpful WikiBuddies
Ramesh Sharma | Jenny Parker | Alison Snieckus

Visitors Map
[url=http://www2.clustrmaps.com/user/c66c3ef4][img]http://www2.clustrmaps.com/stats/maps-no_clusters/wikieducator.org-User-Vilimaka-thumb.jpg[/img][/url]

Feedback and notes from my WikiNeighbours
Congratulations, Vili, on being awarded the UPE award for July 2011! Your page is very impressive and interesting. Lot to learn from you. Keep up the wonderful work and enjoy doing what you are doing. Regards, -- Kalpana--Kalpana Gupte 17:53, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Dear Vili, Can you share with us your experiences on what was most beneficial to you on learning wiki skills? --R C Sharma, PhD 14:12, 3 August 2010 (UTC)



--jennip 01:25, 31 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi Ramesh, thanks a lot again for fixing my signature for me. I was a bit downhearted because it appeared to work in other pages and not in my userpage. )-: But it's beautiful and working perfectly now. Vinaka and Malo 'aupito (Thank you in Fijian (Vinaka) and Tongan (Malo 'aupito).--Vilimaka Foliaki 21:36, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

--jennip 02:19, 27 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Dear Vili, You are most welcome! Please email me or leave a note on my page if you need more assistance. Regards.--Ramesh Sharma 13:42 26 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi Ramesh, I kind of cheated with my signature! the link wasn't active when I used the insert signature. So I hyperlinked the signature. Note: even may signature to this comment is not linked--Vilimaka Foliaki 23:30, 26 July 2010 (UTC)--VFoliaki 23:25, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

--jennip 03:30, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi Vili, Welcome to WikiEducator. Nice work on the two projects that you have started--quite visually appealing. I took the liberty to add some boilerplate format to your userpage, integrating the content that you had already added to the page. Hope this is helpful. Feel free to change in whatever ways you would like. And don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. By the way, I've just started using moodle in my teaching; I taught a hybrid statistics course last year.


 * Your WikiNeighbor, --Alison Snieckus 23:22, 19 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi, Thanks for your comment, hope to communicate further through wiki. --Shijna 14:59, 31 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Dear Vili, Welcome to WikiEducator again. Love you page! Great work. Keep going. Did you know that you can win the user page expo award. It is given for best user page on a monthly basis. See here: User Page Excellence Award. You are now that you are part of our Wiki family, know that you have joined over 15,500 educators around the world. You have now access to a lot of shared knowledge which you can use towards building your projects in open education. Good to have you with us. Feel free to ask questions where you need to. We are here to help you. Warm wishes--Patricia Schlicht 02:19, 26 August 2010 (UTC)