Introducing Rainschool

Hello, may I take this opportunity to update you about developments on the Rainschool web site?

Setting up the site

The site was set up, technically-speaking, by Ben Leonard, working in collaboration with myself, Peter Ryley. It is based on the Wordpress template, customised in various ways by Ben and designed to meet (as far as possible!) the specifications required by me, as author of the texts found on the site.

 Since 25th October we have been able to sell Rainring cards and accessories. I have also been uploading my exercises to help students improve their English writing skills.  I have also begun to upload some exercises in the grammar section, from Elementary/Intermediate through to Advanced/Proficiency

The contents of the site

Rainschool.com is divided into two main areas, known as the School of English and the School of Rainring.

A. The School of English

How it began

This project first happened through discussions between myself and Alan Cooper. His site www.enjoyingenglish2008.org provides a library of material to help students to access via the web a wide range of materials in English to support and develop their English studies.

The main idea

Rainschool’s School of English aims principally to provide a bank of practice exercises to enable students to develop their ability to use correct, well-structured English. This site is linked to the enjoying English one, with the idea that students using that site will have immediate and free access to exercises and explanations. For the answers, a small charge is made. One single payment allows lifetime access to all the exercise answers in that section.

Live online English classes

I have not given up on my desire to offer online English classes. However, work on the exercises is not proceeding as quickly as I hoped, and I would like to get this further advanced before I feel ready to tackle live online tuition.

B. The School of Rainring

Teaching and learning the cards

The Rainring psychological divination cards are unlike anything else in existence. After spending a year trying to promote them on the web, it has become clear to Peter that the great majority of people approaching Rainring need a network of support and back-up in order to help them master the Rainring system.

One of the two principal aims of this site is to create possibilities for online tuition in Rainring, with the idea of training a first generation of readers. We hope that these will include both people who will use the cards privately, and others who will eventually read them professionally. Ultimately, we (my partner Hacina Guezoul and myself) want to train people to become trainers.

Update: (March 09) None of the above has changed, except that we are both, for the moment, too busy with other priorities.

New words & new products

The second main aim of Rainschool is to popularise the cards themselves. Our site at www.rainringcards.com, with its brilliant interactive play facility, has the unfortunate drawback that we do not manage its content. This means that every change which is needed has to be paid for. The Rainschool site is designed to enable us to constantly revise, update and develop the content without cost to ourselves.

This means that any new Rainring items for sale – such as the directory of meanings summary now on sale for the first time – will be made available through this site, not via the rainringcards site. And it of course means that, as Peter has been doing at http://94stranger.wordpress.com, new articles on Rainring topics can be published, or old ones revised, whenever needed.

Peter Ryley

July 2009