Encouragement
The Main Library at ISB has been a hive of activity over the last two weeks. Grades 6, 7, and 8 has been getting book talks to encourage reading, and they have been working with their Social Studies teachers and the new MS Tech Coach, Mr. P to explore the Virtual World with our Occulus Quests. The Grade 7’s have been in working on a wonderful assignment where they meet in Virtual Reality a young Syrian girl, Sidra, who is living in a refugee camp. This is an experience where the students are encourage to empathize with the plight of the girl and her family as they learn about forced migration. They dig deeper then by going to look at recent news articles from our databases on the refugee camps around the world to get real life feel for how big an issue this is for so many. Finally, the MS Coding class has been in combining their new coding skills with a program called Cospaces.com and Virtual Reality as they write code for their own multimedia ideas. It is encouraging them to explore their ideas and passions.
The High School students are also in the library presenting for the chance to give an official Ted Talk in January. Each student in Grade 11 conducted the research and then has to present in a Ted Talk fashion. Their classmates will then pick the best repesentatives from their class to speak at the 10th Annual Tedxyouth@ISBangkok on January 19th 2022. Additionally, the IB Geography and Theory of Knowledge (TOK) classes have been coming in using the Virtual Reality to explore locations around the world. For TOK they are looking at religious sites around the global with the challenge of idenitifying how people react to these types of locations and encouraging them to ask questions of why the locations mean so much to people. Lastly all of the Grade 10 will be in the library particpating in an amazing National Geographic Explore to look at the polar ice caps and results of global warming to further encourage them to take action on solutions to climate change.
All this, and we are book talking to encourage reading, providing constant support to students. We love seeing all the students in the library and things are just really so much better. Finally, we just received our new books from a long overdue order (customs stopped delivery) and there are some greats in there, so if you want to talk books or need a recommendation let us know.
Warmest Regards
The Main Library Staff
Bell’s Recommendation
BOOK REVIEW! Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Sometimes it is the achievement that means the most. That is what is so nice and refreshing about short stories. That being said Ted Chiang’s latest book, Exhalation is an amazing compilation of sci fi stories that will challenge your thinking. His writing is so complex yet easy to access. My favoirte is the “The Tale of the Weaver Who Stole from Himself’. Think about having the ability to see yourself in the future. Maybe you are doing really well and you want to make it happen quicker, so you think about changing it, does it change the future? Or are you really just confirming the future? Wierd….
