New Award at AIS Jakarta

[Linzi Band]

The Award has been going from strength to strength here at AIS.  Last year, our first year, we were able to get 7 students through the bronze level award, this year we have increased our students to a keen group of 20 participants.   Considering our students are offered the opportunity as an additional activity as opposed to it forming a part of any formal curicullum, it came as a suprise that so many wished to join the group this year.  I can only imagine that it received good press from the students who completed it last year, this coupled with teacher support to promote the award went a long way. 

 

The twenty students are from all over the world spanning year 7 through to year 11 and have come together with a common purpose.  It is, an ideal group to work with and I am learning so much from them.  We share an enthusiasm which is visible during every meeting and I am slowly handing over the reins to the students whom each week, are able to take greater responsibility for planning their own projects and contributions for this year. 

 

We have added an extra element for the personal reflection section, we are using Edmodo as an opportunity for all students to contribute.  The students have agreed upon a responsibility to post weekly expressing their thoughts and feelings about personal discoveries, ideas and contributions.  We share useful websites and anyone can open up a discussion topic.  It is taking some time to build but when active, it is a great way to discuss ideas and give views and opinions, it offers some of the students who may experience language issues in the meetings and those younger students who may not feel so confident in front of older peers, an additional equal space to contribute.

So far this year (started January) we have been able to establish our involvement in a Habitat for Humanity Youth Program for which we are planning the fundraising and we begin to explore cultural awareness this month, by looking at youth games from all over the world.  The students will be involved in presenting a game from their culture to others so we can learn and play together. 

 

More news as it comes.

[Boyd Roberts]

Many thanks for sharing this, Linzi.

It's great to hear about how the number of participants has increased and how students are taking on more responsibility within the Award. I wonder how it all works with quite a wide age range, as in quite a number of centres participants tend to be of similar ages.

 

Also very interested to hear about Edmondo. Must investigate this further, sa it may be a better platform than Ning for our interations and sharing of resoources etc within the Award.

http://about.edmodo.com/