Our mission is to ensure that students of different nationalities grow to their full potential as independent learners in a caring British international community.
NEWS Patana
Friday 1st June 2018
Volume 20 Issue 32
www.patana.ac.th
GUIDING STATEMENTS SURVEY 2018 RESULTS SUMMARY Page 2 Also in this issue...
FOBISIA Maths Competition / Sports Awards Dinner / STEM with Suyash 01/06/2018
Bangkok Patana School News
Bangkok Patana is a not-for-profit IB World School, accredited by CIS, NEASC and ONESQA
1
GUIDING STATEMENTS SURVEY 2018
RESULTS SUMMARY
James Penstone, Cross Campus Principal
Y
ou might remember that we opened a survey about our Guiding Statements in April. It had a very large response, as the numbers show. The main purpose of this survey is to check how familiar the community is with our Mission, Vision and Values, and to see how much we agree that these are a real part of the school. The last time we did something like this was in April 2015, when we reviewed our Mission and older ‘Principles’. In this week’s article, I am sharing the ‘headline’ results from the survey this year.
HOW FAMILIAR ARE WE WITH OUR GUIDING STATEMENTS? It is clear that, overall, we are becoming more familiar with the school’s Guiding Statements (with the greatest gain amongst our students). Our Guiding Statements have received a lot of attention since they were launched at the start of last school year, so it is encouraging to see that this is the case. Over time, our ambition is that the entire community will have nearer to 100% awareness. We also looked at how much we agree that the Mission, Vision and Values are actually in place (a real part of what we do) at Bangkok Patana School. VISION: WE DEVELOP GLOBAL CITIZENS WHO SHAPE THEIR WORLD THROUGH INDEPENDENCE, EMPATHY, CREATIVITY AND CRITICAL THINKING.
2
Bangkok Patana School News
01/06/2018
DO PARENTS AGREE THAT OUR VISION STATEMENT IS REALLY HAPPENING? When you look at a graph like this, it is very typical of all the results across all of the surveys. There are far bigger bars with light or dark green (agree and strongly agree) than those with orange or red (disagree or strongly disagree). So, for example, 92% of parents agree or strongly agree that our school develops Global Citizens. With such high agreement across all of the surveys, we still need to think about how we can improve in the long run. Perhaps the most obvious way to do this is to work on those areas with a lower % of ‘strongly agree’. So in the example above, you could say that we are currently doing a better job of encouraging independence than developing empathy, although there will always be room for improvement in both.
DO STUDENTS AGREE THAT OUR GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP VALUES ARE REAL? Again, these results show much more agreement than disagreement with our specific Global Citizenship values. This is reassuring because we have given a lot of attention to these values this year in terms of professional learning for academic staff, as well as planning, preparation and delivery for students’ learning experiences. There are some of these values which are not quite as well understood (with higher purple bars) such as ‘integrity’ and ‘interculturalism’. This shows that we still have work to do in exploring what these mean and how they work in practice for a student. We are definitely getting there, and the next time we run a survey like this, we hope to see even more dark greens across the board. This survey will be re-visited every one or two years so that we can measure our own progress with our Guiding Statements. There were also lots of comments left in these surveys which deserve our full attention and I have been discussing the areas that we can still get better at with our Senior Leadership Team. Thank you to all of you who gave your precious time to complete this survey, it has certainly given us lots to think about for future planning. Wishing everyone an excellent last few weeks of term as we maintain momentum towards the long holiday ahead.
01/06/2018
Bangkok Patana School News
3
FOBISIA Maths Competition
Duncan Ferguson, Lead Teacher for Extended Learning, Primary School
B
ack in March, four Year 6 students travelled to ABC International School in Ho Chi Minh to compete in the Primary FOBISIA Maths Competition. There were 30 schools competing from across Asia. Challenges included team events and individual events with students taking part in wide variety of mathematical activities, including a relay event, a construction challenge, a maths trail, a puzzle round, a music round and much more. Piradon (Keane) Prasertsintanah, Saran (Tunt) Pungpapong, Tiger Tam and Kaishin Yao were wonderful ambassadors for Bangkok Patana School, showing real grit, determination, creativity and mathematical thinking. They performed especially well in the individual challenge, with their combined scores placing them third overall in this event. They did very well and finished seventh overall in the whole event.
Dates
for your
Diary...
4
Saturday 2nd June Graduation Wednesday 6th June Patana United Saturday 9th June School Fees Due Wednesday 13th June Dance Extravaganza Friday 22nd June End of Year Assembly Bangkok Patana School News
01/06/2018
tommorrow!
01/06/2018
Bangkok Patana School News
The ceremony will be broadcast live on the Bangkok Patana School YouTube, why not join us online and enjoy this wonderful event on Saturday 2nd June from 4:00pm!
5
#93 Summer Reading List
(LA Johnson/NPR)
S
ummer is tantalisingly close. My eldest is part way through the fourth in the Harry Potter series and we plan to take the family to the Warner Bros. Harry Potter Studio tour in London over the break. This is just one of a list of great ideas from Pernille Ripp’s blog post called ’Parents – How to Create Great Summer Reading Experiences for All’, summarised here: Have a to-be-read list Use audio books Celebrate abandonment, but ask questions Visit places where books are present Make it social Allow real choice Read aloud* Have books everywhere Be invested and interested Explore new books together Keep it fun Create a routine * Some fascinating research to support the power of reading aloud with your children can be found here: https://www. kqed.org/mindshift/51281/whats-going-on-in-your-childs-brain-when-you-read-them-a-story Have a wonderful weekend.
Brian Taylor Assistant Principal, Cross Campus Curriculum Technology Integration
click here for the Canteen
Please note the menu is updated for the following week on Friday at 1pm
6
Bangkok Patana School News
Menu 01/06/2018
Changes in School Fee Payment Options T
here have been some recent changes to the methods by which school fee payments can be made.
1. Payments can now be made online via the Parents' Gateway using Paypal. You can access the online payment via this link https://community.patana.ac.th/online-payment or from the Parents' Gateway dashboard. 2. Bill payments can be made using the ATMs and online banking services from Kasikornbank and SCB 3. Payments can still be made by transferring to the school bank account and sending a copy of the transfer advice to accounts@patana.ac.th 4. Unfortunately, SCB bank no longer supports bill payment for school fees by person at the branches effective from 1st June 2018. If you have any questions or difficulties, please contact accounts@patana.ac.th or call 02 785 2419.
YEARBOOK 2018 Every year, despite our best efforts, we are left with a large number of unwanted and unclaimed Yearbooks. Every student will automatically receive a book each on the last day of term but in keeping with our environemental efforts and to waste less we are asking you to inform us if you would prefer just one book per family. Please email publish@patana.ac.th and let us know. Many thanks for your support in making Bangkok Patana even greener.
01/06/2018
CLICK HERE TO VIEW ALL OF THE PATANA CONCERT PHOTOGRAPHS FOR 2017/18
Bangkok Patana School News
7
Suyash Kothari, Year 12
What Exactly is the Internet?
bly sends and receives signals through physical cables (you may have heard of Ethernet cables) or through Wi-Fi. These ‘signals’ are what we call ‘packets’ of data; any information that is sent or received via the in- Remember: Wi-Fi and ternet is broken down into packets, internet are two different each containing the destination IP things. The internet is the he internet is often seen as a mystical cloud that floats in address that you are sending in- network infrastructure the air above us – a cloud that we can use to beam formation to, the source IP address itself, whereas Wi-Fi is a megabytes of information to the rest of the world. With mis- (i.e. your IP address), and the data wireless and convenient means of accessing the leading terms like ‘cloud computing’ and ‘cloud storage’, it’s itself. Every packet of the data you internet. easy to think this. But what exactly is the internet, and how are sending also contains a sedoes it work? By the end of this article, you will be in the top quence number that tells the destiten percent of people who understand what the internet real- nation computer which order the packets should be arranged in. If you are sending an image, for example, it would be broly is. ken down into hundreds of packets, each acting as a piece of the wider puzzle.
T
The packets that are sent to your LAN are then connected to a regional Wide Area Network (WAN). WANs are usually controlled by your Internet Service Provider (ISP), which is just a fancy name for companies like True or AIS. The WAN router is connected to another WAN router that covers a larger geographical area. Think of routers as junctions in a circuit. Each of these router-to-router transmissions that are sent Figure 1: The Internet as we imagine it are called ‘hops’. Depending on where you are, there will be We can attempt to answer our big question by considering several of these hops before your device sends or receives a the definition of ‘Internet’. The Oxford English Dictionary de- packet of information to the destination. fines it as ‘a global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities, consisting of interconnected networks using standardised communication protocols’. While we can accept this, the definition doesn’t give us an insight into how the ‘global computer network’ works. To better understand the Internet, we must first know that every device that is part of the internet – including the device you are currently using – has an Internet Protocol (IP) Address. These addresses are unique to your devices, just as your postal address is to your home. If you are curious as to what your device’s IP address is, simply Google ‘my IP address’. The first step in receiving or sending information using the Figure 2: An example Traceroute internet is the connection between your device and your What if a packet never reaches the destination and hops Local Area Network (LAN), which are essentially other de- forever? Every time there is a hop, the hop count increases vices connected to your router at home. Your device proba8
Bangkok Patana School News
01/06/2018
by 1 (like a tally). If a hop count for a particular exchange is put together again. is absurdly high, the packet is deleted and the packet is sent So...in summary again from the source. The internet isn’t a thing in itself. The connections between To demonstrate this, I have done a ‘traceroute’ for Google. com, showing the hops that are being made to get to the des- your computer to different routers and the physical fibre-optic tination server. Each line is a different router that one packet of cables that connect routers in one region to another is the internet. What is unique about this is that there is no centralised information is sent through. station for the internet. Unlike the initial ‘cloud’ representation As stated in Figure 2, the maximum number of hops being of the internet, the internet does not exist in one place but is a allowed for my packet being sent to Google accessing is matrix of devices and connections. 30. It did it with a hop count of 12, each hop getting closer Based on the packet-switching characteristics of ARPANET and closer to the Google, whose IP address is shown to be “172.217.31.110”. If you enter the IP address inside the quota- – a non-commercial network infrastructure originally created tion marks into your web browser, it will take you to Google. for the United States Department of Defence in the 1970s – It should be noted that Google isn’t a cloud-like object either. the Internet allows us to send important pieces of information Google’s data are stored in physical server rooms around across large areas – instantly. The accessibility of the Internet the world and each of these server rooms consist of physical has increased by such a large amount over the last several hard drives containing, for example, your files that you store decades that we now send anything we want to others on the Internet. The convenience of the Internet as a means of on Google Drive and Gmail. spreading information – although useful – also has its downsides. Advertisements, misleading campaigns and Social Media – all of which are simply billions of packets being exchanged – affect our everyday living and will increasingly do so. Whether technology is enhancing our lives or compromising our livelihood is a topic of debate, especially with the controversial Net Neutrality dispute. Figure 3: Routing and Hops. Source: The Free Dictionary
To learn more about the Internet, the World Wide Web and specific protocols, visit the HowStuffWorks website.
NEXT WEEK’S QUESTION: CAN WE USE
What’s interesting is that there are multiple ways of accessPHYSICS TO UNDERSTAND THE ing Google (or sending and receiving packets to any other device connected to the Internet). If I were to do the traceroute ‘YANNY OR LAUREL’ PHENOMENON? again, the routers being used would most likely be different to the ones used in Figure 2, even if the destination is the same. Bibliography: This is advantageous: if you were sending 100 packets (that https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/internet combine to make an image, for instance) of data to a friend https://computer.howstuffworks.com/router3.htm via the internet, it is faster to have all 100 packets sent at once, https://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/ineach taking different routes, than to wait for the route the first ternet.htm packet took to be free before sending the second packet. How does each router know which router to forward a packet to? Each router has a directory of the IP addresses of the networks and devices it services as well as a database of the routers it is connected to. If the router in question isn’t connected to a network that contains the destination IP address, it forwards it to a router that is nearer to the destination. Keep in mind that a router doesn’t have a brain – it numerically compares the destination address to its own and to ones it is connected to. It typically sends the packet to the router whose IP address is least different to the destination’s address.
https://www.bbc.com/education/guides/z8nk87h/revision/1 https://web.stanford.edu/class/msande91si/www-spr04/ readings/week1/InternetWhitepaper.htm https://www.cnet.com/how-to/home-networking-explained-part-4-wi-fi-vs-internet/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QhU9jd03a0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guvsH5OFizE&t=564s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEaKrq3SpW8 https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/hop+count https://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/internet-versus-world-wide-web1.htm
Once the packets of data arrive at the destination, they are reassembled into the original piece of information: the puzzle 01/06/2018
Bangkok Patana School News
9
THE SPORTS AWARDS DINNER
25.05.18
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE WINNERS!
WELL DONE TO EVERYONE WHO REPRESENTED BANGKOK PATANA THIS YEAR!
10
Bangkok Patana School News
01/06/2018
JUNIOR GIRL – CLARA BOUCHER JUNIOR BOY - VINCENT BOULOM SENIOR GIRL – MONIQA NEILSEN SENIOR BOY – MALACHI FRYE INDIVIDUAL SPORTS GIRL – PAWINEE (BALLOON) RUAMRAK INDIVIDUAL SPORTS BOY ZHILING (DONALD) ZHOU
ALL THE PICTURES ON FACEBOOK HERE!
GOOD LUCK TO OUR
PRIMARY FOBISIA TEAM COMPETING IN PHUKET THIS WEEKEND!
01/06/2018
Bangkok Patana School News
11
the m o r f st The late
12
PTG
Bangkok Patana School News
01/06/2018
Click here to join the PTG Facebook page
01/06/2018
Bangkok Patana School News
13
Lockdown and Fire Drill Procedure Bangkok Patana School takes the safety of our school community very seriously. We have a management team that meet and discuss many different crisis scenarios and we have processes and procedures in place for these. We have strong links with the local police and the various embassies who alert us to any security concerns and also visit our school to review our existing procedures and provide advice on security measures. One of the areas that we practise regularly throughout the year is the Fire Evacuation and Lockdown procedures. In Term 1 and 2, we have ‘announced’ and ‘unannounced’ drills. This enables our community to practise reacting appropriately in the event of an alarm sounding on the school campus. PLEASE READ THE INFORMATION BELOW CAREFULLY SO YOU ARE AWARE OF OUR PROCEDURES SHOULD YOU BE ON CAMPUS WHEN AN ALARM SOUNDS. WHAT TO DO IF YOU ARE ON THE SCHOOL CAMPUS WHEN AN ALARM SOUNDS? Lockdown Alarm If you are on campus and hear the ‘lockdown’ alarm (similar to a siren), please follow instructions from nearby staff. If you are not in a building, please enter the nearest building and follow instructions from staff. In a lockdown, you should be out of sight until you hear three clear whistles from the security team or are instructed that it is all clear from a security guard or member of staff. You will not be allowed to enter or exit the campus during a lockdown. Fire Alarm If you are on the school campus and hear a fire alarm please act immediately and follow the Evacuation Route sign to the nearest assembly point, (see example).
Please make sure that you report to the Zone Fire Point Person who will be wearing an emergency jacket and have radio communication. They will be located in the middle of the zone area and will take your name and tell you where you need to stand. There are seven zones – green, yellow, blue, white, red, purple and orange. Look for these signs when you are next in school to familiarise yourself with the evacuation routes. If you are outside the school grounds during a Fire Evacuation please note that you will not be allowed entry into school until the all clear has been given. Please follow instructions from our Security team. WHAT DOES THE FLASHING RED LIGHT MEAN? If you see a flashing red light on the wall or ceiling it means that an alarm has been activated somewhere in school. When the light is just flashing you do not need to do anything or leave the building but be on alert to listen for an audible alarm which will let you know what to do next. The activated alarm will be checked by the guards and if necessary the fire alarm or lock down alarm will then sound for you to respond to as normal. So you only need to respond if you hear the actual siren or if a guard or senior member of staff gives you instructions to follow. If it is a false alarm the flashing red light will stop shortly without any alarms sounding. WHEN WILL THE ALARMS SOUND? Luckily anytime you may have heard the alarm it has been a drill only. We hold announced and unannounced Fire and Lockdown Drills throughout the year and these procedures are for the safety and protection of all students, staff and visitors. If you are on the school campus during the alarm sounding please help to set a good example to all students by responding quickly, remaining quiet during this time and following instructions from Senior Staff. Many thanks for your cooperation.
14
Bangkok Patana School News
01/06/2018
01/06/2018
Bangkok Patana School News
15
16
Bangkok Patana School News
01/06/2018
Community
01/06/2018
Bangkok Patana School News
17
Community
18
Bangkok Patana School News
01/06/2018
Community
BRITISH SCOUTING OVERSEAS Would your child like to join UK Cubs (Ages 8 10½) or Beavers (ages 6 8)?
There is now a British Scouting Overseas group in Bangkok!
These new Cubs and Beaver groups run from 9am to 10:30am on Saturday mornings at Regent's International School, Pracha Uthit Road. If any adults are also interested in helping out, we would love to hear from you too. Please email all enquiries to 1stBangkokBSO@gmail.com. What is BSO? British Scouting Overseas is a UK Scout area, providing UK Scouting to UK citizens (and in some cases other nationalities) who are living overseas. BSO exists to support families around the world where, due to cultural or language barriers, it is not always possible for young people from the UK to join local Scout Groups in the country where they reside. Our aim is to ensure that all members of BSO will feel they are full members of UK Scouting. They will enjoy their activities in a safe and secure environment best suited to their local circumstances and will have access to high quality support and advice no matter where in the world they may be situated. There are a number of groups around the world including KL, Jakarta and Singapore however 1st Bangkok is
the first group in this area.
01/06/2018
Bangkok Patana School News
19
For daily updates, snapshots and news on life at school you can find us here...
643 Lasalle Road (Sukhumvit 105) Bangna, Bangkok 10260. THAILAND Tel: +66 (0) 2785 2200 Fax: +66 (0) 2785 2399 www.patana.ac.th Email: reception@patana.ac.th 20
Bangkok Patana School News
01/06/2018