supermathu@gmail.com

Cheers

All of the participants selected for the December PYP IB Academy have already been notified I did send an email to those who applied and were not successful in getting a spot at this training, but sometimes emails simply do not get to the volunteer. If you did apply, your application will be kept in the software and considered for trainings scheduled in the next three years.

Best
Lana

When will applicants be notified if they were accepted into the December Academy?

Thanks!
Ellen

I always send a document explaining the benefits along with the MEDEX card. As we discussed, I did send this document to you one last year when you questioned our benefits and so I am surprised that you thought that you were covered.

I had planned this information for a later blog, so I am delighted that you posted a comment.

The volunteer insurance covers the following:

Accident/catastrophic illness medical coverage limited to U.S. $5,000. ($100.00 deductible)

Accidental death/dismemberment up to U.S. $250,000.

Medical evacuation and repatriation up to U.S. $50,000. (Provided you are more than 100 miles from your place of residence).

While on IB Americas assignment, you should always use your personal health insurance for everyday illness and use the MEDEX coverage only for accidental illness.

Your MEDEX coverage will be considered secondary insurance to your personal coverage.

Please post any further questions to this blog and have a great week.

Lana

Be warned! IB medical cover on assignment is not what we would hope for for volunteers. Volunteers are only covered for accidents and the first $5,000.00 is a deductible …

Don’t assume that if you are taken ill you will be covered … as I discovered last week.

Lana has been very good in explaining the limitations of the plan; but in busy liveswe sometimes “assume” - don’t assume medically: carry other insurance.

$195.00 poorer …

Dennis

Hi there,
Our grade 5 classes at Southbank International School in London (UK) have just completed a unit of inquiry under the transdisciplinary theme ‘Sharing the Planet’. The central idea of our unit was ‘The ways we use energy resources can affect our environment’. For their summative assessment, students had to come up with a realistic action to save energy that could be implemented in their homes. While installing solar panels and wind turbines were not entirely ‘realistic’ in most cases, other changes, such as setting up indoor compost bins, changing to energy saving lightbulbs, and walking to school, were.

We integrated our language writing focus which was writing to persuade. Students wrote a persuasive piece and gathered the resources necessary to implement the change. They then presented their arguments to their parents. Please have a look at our Grade 5 blog to see parent comments about the impact of the students’ arguments and the resulting action. We were very impressed with their efforts!

Here is the link to our blog:

http://www.southbank.net/blogs/subjects/hampstead_grade_5/

Please have a look at the entry titled: ‘How Persuasive are our Students?’ Parent comments can be found below the post.

Thanks very much!
Alexandra Gordon & Beverley Williams
Grade 5 Teachers

All the presentations that have the permission of the presenter will be posted on this blog (tab in the header Presentations).

I think the presentation or rather discussion that would be of the most interest to you was the one by Mr Louis Bouchard. Your contact details have been passed on to him and he will answer you more fully.

Many thanks.

We are delighted to receive such a positive response to our new volunteer blog. We hope that it will be a great spot for volunteers to receive timely information in an interactive format. Please keep us bookmarked because we will be adding a few informative posts in the next few weeks.

Best,

Lana

Unfortunately, Ii could not attend the conference, but I am very interested in the issues about the French community. Is it possible to get the scripts of the conference even if one has not attended?
Thanks a lot

Netty Maas, Luxembourg

I find this IB initiative very positive and motivating. It is wonderful to see the IB keeping up with technological advances and appealing to the more ICT-oriented population (including students) with innovations such as the Facebook threads. I am sure that many will benefit from direct communication through this site!

Kind regards,
Alex

Your school’s approach to sustainability sounds very interesting and would love to hear more about it. What school are you workshing for in Lima?

Thanks,

Guy

At the community level, teachers of the ECO group and parents of The Green Family and the Parent Teacher Association meet regularly to discuss and implement action plans that can reduce the school’s carbon footprint and conserve energy and water, as well as source out ECO alternatives for homes. The school’s extensive recycling program includes recycling PET bottles, aluminium and steel cans, plastic lunch containers, paper, battery and clothing.

At the student level, the Student Environment Council raises awareness and promotes student involvement through assemblies (such as the Earth Day Assembly), updating recycling bins and ECO news; and provides the opportunity for creative green alternatives, such as ‘Recycle Wear’. In an effort to support local communities, the Student Environment Council also organises fundraisers through bake sales, non-uniform days and recently, the annual Quiz Night. Day-to-day activities ensure that paper is reused before it is recycled, waste is reduced and electrical devices switched off when not in use. There are also many CAS activities that allow for student involvement, such as Reef Cleaning off the coast of Brunei and the annual Borneo Global Issues Conference, which is a carbon-neutral, student-led MUN styled conference with one committee actually dedicated to solving Environmental Issues. Recently, a student led ECO Action Team held its first meeting, discussing ideas for projects that will further the school’s green initiatives.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/22/kindle-amazon-digital-rights

You can’t help but admire the irony of censoring books by Orwell.

many thanks

Thanks for your comment. You have already applied to the online registration system and your application will definitely be considered for this training and any subsequent training for the next three years.

The criterion changes for volunteer selection for each training and depends upon IB Americas volunteer needs.

Looking forward to more comments from all volunteers.

Best regards,

Lana

sincerely, Jan

Good Luck,

Robert

Last year we met in Baltimore during the IB level 1 training for principals. I was that person from St. Maarten in the Caribbean. I would like to know if you’re going to Sevilla. Actually I hope to see you there and discuss some things. Our site visit will take place on December 7th and 8th. We are still quite excited, but at the same time face some challenges in terms of filling up all vacancies. We are very proud of the fact that we hopefully will become the first subsidized school in the Caribbean, but at the same time it is hard to recruit teachers almost a year before the program starts. Is there a way you can help me with advice…..

Thanks in advance. Johanna Sommers, St. Dominic High School - St. Maarten

We have problems with confirmation of registration. We have filled the registration form online, but we haven’t gotten any information back. We called secretairat but it’s busy all the time.
What should I do?

Kate - European school

Mr Teacher, I’m not clear about what you wish to sort out.

We are actually in the process of building a virtual community for students and other IB stakeholders. You will be able to connect to other students and help one another learn in this online space. Read our DSI blog for more information: http://blogs.ibo.org/

Thanks,
Alissa

In ref. to the Blog articles regarding Zanzibar spices, and in the possible perspective of bringing to local farmers value-added structure (organic production, eco-friendly and good practice development in plantations , etc)
and therefore commercial interest from eco-luxury spice brands in Europe,
we wish to get in touch with you and the team in charge of this field of action, possibly to find new ways to help spices producers/farmers in Zanzibar to place/market part of their production nearby new sustainable development buyers/marketers.
Gratitude for sending an email with your email references, allowing for a constructive and positive exchange in the perspective of a cooperation in this particular field.
Fred Aurelien

Facebook isn’t the IB’s first foray into social media. The OCC is a huge and very active community forum which has been around for a few years!

We’ve been ‘pro-actively’ Twittering as IB since November 2008 (other IB staff have been using Twitter in their work since it started – I’d suggest you follow @jamesfk), and there have been various initiatives through OPLS, including use of wikispaces, micro-blogging tools like Yammer and the introduction of online learning through Moodle and Triple A learning.

Of course, I can’t post this response without mentioning DP online….which holds the potential to be the most significant social media enabled enhancement to the IB’s business of all.

For the IB, the great challenge is not in keeping up with technology, but in appropriately applying it to our core business and mission…and in making that work for all our stakeholders, not just the ‘techies’.

This month’s issue of IB World is technology focused, and it introduces a number of these great initiatives - http://www.ibo.org/ibworld/may09/

First this makes small NFPs with a tight focus, as well as moderately large passion projects of individuals (my library, for example), more viable. My experience on the ground in Kenya has taught me that it takes someone immersed in the life of a location to understand root issues and why those issues are perpetuating. Only then can projects that directly address those issues be created with an action plan that accounts for the local conditions. Now people working the front lines, the ones with the intimate knowledge that is so crucial to success, are empowered through new technology platforms and this shift in donor preferences.

In a broader sense, this trend should make all NFPs more effective. When a donor chooses to give money to a defined and budgeted project they are, in essence, preemptively holding an organization accountable to where those hard earned dollars will go. As big NFPs start to feel the effects of this growing preference (as in losing donations), they’ll start to adopt specific micro-giving fund raising approaches too. The result should be a systemic increase in transparency, accountability and money directed to projects and away from bureaucracy. Like you mentioned, this makes giving more gratifying, which should lead to more of it. There could very well be a virtuous circle unfolding before our very eyes!

Thanks so much for your feedback! You have some great ideas, and you seem to fully understand what IB students need.

I’m not sure if our Facebook fan page has the capabilities to develop this, though. However, our fan page is part of a larger vision here at the IB, which is the Digital Space Initiative. This is a three-year project to offer members of the IB community a high-level experience through the Stakeholder Gateway and Virtual Community.

Within the Virtual Community platform, we will be able to organize many channels of communication for IB students like yourself. You will be able to collaborate and share ideas and resources amongst other users and students around the world. I think that a collaborative CAS activity is a great idea for the Virtual Community!

Anissa, you clearly have a solid understanding of the potential of online connectivity and social media. I’m very excited about your ideas and I hope that you follow what we are doing and continue to offer your ideas to us. You make the IB proud!

Thank you!