Patana News Volume 21 Issue 31

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 24h May 2019

Volume 21 Issue 31

www.patana.ac.th

RESPECTFUL CONTRIBUTORS TO OUR COMMUNITIES

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Also in this issue...

Bringing an Organic Idea to Reality /Creative Coding Challenge 24/05/2019

Bangkok Patana School News

Bangkok Patana is a not-for-profit IB World School accredited by CIS

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We are Respectful Contributors to Digital and Local Communities Jason Cooper, Primary Principal

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hroughout the school year I have the opportunity to of the moment so that we’re constantly attend and participate in a wide range of school thinking how is this going to play out events, many of which enable us to showcase the among other people. learning, physical, musical, artistic and social-emotional This statement caused me to stop and reflect for quite development of our students to you, the parents. Over time some time. When I’m riding my mountain bike, am I really I have witnessed more and more of these wonderful events being lived and captured through the lenses of mobile focused on enjoying the moment, or am I thinking about photo opportunities that I can share on Instagram? As devices. At a recent event I took the following photo: parents, when we are cheering on our children at a Sports Day, or Swim Gala, or watching them share their learning at an assembly, are we really living in the moment, or are we thinking about which moment we can capture to share via our social media platforms?

As we approach the end of the academic year there will be a number of events for parents to attend. When you attend these events I encourage you to think about how you will use your device. When your children look up to locate you in the audience, will they see the pride and love show through on your face, or will they see the cold surface of a phone or iPad? As parents and educators, I appreciate the irony of me using my mobile device to our roles are to live these moments with our children, not capture an image of people using their mobile devices, capture them for our followers. but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to visually capture how many of us are seeing precious moments through a screen.

Recently I listened to an episode from The Ezra Klein Show Podcast entitled, “Work as Identity, Burnout as Lifestyle.” This was a really fascinating conversation where Ezra Klein interviewed Anne Helen Petersen (author of How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation) and Derek Thompson (author of Workism is Making Americans Miserable) about the prevailing culture of workism. The part of the conversation that really struck a chord with me was this: I think that this is just a sort of implicit crime of social media, that it forces us to be external. Forces us to always be out

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Photo courtesy of Duluth News Tribune

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Bringing an Organic Idea to Reality Minato Yamasaki, 6C

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ave you ever heard of compost? It is a procedure where food scraps and other biodegradable materials are broken down and turned into nutrient-rich fertilizer with the power of microorganisms and bacteria. The first time I found out about this completely eco-friendly procedure was when I visited the zero-waste school, Roong Aroon.

At first, I thought that compost might just seem like a pile of food waste, shredded paper and a bunch of other biodegradable materials. That opinion changed during my visit to this school. This was my inspiration and catalyst for my compost project. During Project-based learning, I was given the chance to choose a project to work on for two terms. Without a second thought, I chose to introduce composting into Bangkok Patana School, as it would be a step towards Patana becoming a more sustainable zero-waste school. In addition to that, it was an idea that the SEC food waste group had in mind from the beginning of the year.

At the beginning of the project, I focused on getting my timeline and ideas organised and clear to myself so that I would succeed or, at least, come close to succeeding.

When I began researching for my project, I quickly turned to thinking about the design of the compost bin.

From my early stages of planning, I knew many requirements of the compost bin. For example, it needed to let in a sufficient amount of oxygen to keep the bacteria and microorganisms alive, but at the same time, prevent the contents from spilling out. If there is not enough oxygen reaching the inside, the bin will smell and attract pests such as rats, snakes and monitor lizards. After gaining

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a lot of knowledge about the design of the compost bin from my research, I made my own compost bin using balsa wood in the DT lab.

Even though I love to keep things neat, I struggled to keep my compost bin perfect. To ensure that the lid would shut properly, I had to measure the distance between the two sides, cut the wood and sand it to make sure it was the perfect length. I also struggled to prevent tear out and chipping of the wood. While making the bin, I created lists of what to put in and what not to put in as an instruction sheet for the canteen staff to use and reference. During this process, I found out that the ratio of green matter and brown matter was an important factor in the decomposition process. The ratio of Greens to Browns for compost is 2 to 1. I researched items in each of the three categories (Greens, Browns and Don’t Compost) to create a list; this was very helpful when I made the guideline for the canteen staff.

Near the end of the project, I met up with Khun Jo and Khun Dao from Buildings and Grounds and Khun Wichit from the Canteen to discuss if the compost bin could be placed and, if so, where it should be located so that the canteen staff could feed it with vegetable scraps. I am very fortunate that the staff of the school welcomed my project and are helping me to make it a reality. Finally, this week, my compost bin is due to be placed near the Klong Fence. If this idea succeeds, I hope to develop my project and place more bins as this will decrease the amount of food waste from the canteen. Because compost is an eco-friendly solution to reduce food waste and biodegradable materials, I hope this will contribute to environmental sustainability at our school.

Bangkok Patana School News

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Design +Technology: Socially Responsible Design for learning needs Jim Thombs, Leader Design + Technology

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n the Design Technology Faculty, we are always looking for ways to connect our curriculum with the real world. We believe it is vitally important to our students that they make this connection as it gives their learning context, purpose and application. More and more, the department is looking for opportunities to work with the wider Patana Community to share knowledge and experience in the world of design and manufacturing or provide live design briefs to stimulate empathy and creativity. Having already worked very successfully with Triumph Motorcycles last term, the Year 12 students this week launched the latest IB DT Socially Responsible Design Project in collaboration with The Village International Education Centre based in Ekkamai. The director of the Centre is Harshi Sehmar whose two daughters attend Bangkok Patana.

The Village International Education Centre (VIE) is a diverse special school who provide for a range of children with different needs. For example, they help children with quite profound to severe learning difficulties work towards gaining life skills and help children who have dyslexia or autism work towards their ASDAN courses.

design need to explore and were grouped and sent to a specialist member of staff in the centre who was teaching students with a specific special need.

Our students’ task is to design a product that will solve a particular problem and ultimately help the students in their learning and therapy.

Our students proceeded to observe and collect data, take detailed photographs, conduct interviews, and take measurements. Everyone worked incredibly hard, returning to the conference room periodically to further document and process information.

Upon returning to school, the students then worked until late into the evening writing up results and beginning to form an idea of the scope for varied and challenging projects they had discovered. The projects range from sensory based products for students suffering from Autism and water play stations to develop fine motor skills to methods of effectively using and storing ‘Numicon’ maths equipment. All of the projects are very real and provide the opportunity for our students to work directly with The Village Education Centre in hopefully providing solutions which have value for their students and staff alike.

The students arrived at VIE at 8.45am and were promptly ushered into a conference room where Mr Sehmar made a presentation describing the aims of the For us, Socially Responsible Design is about seeing the Village International Education Centre and the amazing bigger picture. Not only working closely with the user work they do, giving our students a window into the world to understand their needs but also taking into account of special needs. The students were allocated a particular environmental, social and financial factors. We want our

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students to be conscientious, empathetic global citizens.

Our concept is to give the students a framework that offers a real world, design and manufacture experience combined with the opportunity to actually make a difference with a solution to a significant design problem.

Thanks must be given too Harshi Sehmar, who gave up the majority of his day to help our students with their work.

We are very fortunate to work at a school with so many parents who are able to make amazing contributions to our Design and Technology curriculum. It truly enables us to give our students an enriched learning experience. We are always very grateful and see these opportunities as paramount to the subject.

PLEASE NOTE THAT MONDAY 3RD JUNE IS NOW A SCHOOL HOLIDAY IN HONOUR OF THE BIRTHDAY OF HM QUEEN SUTHIDA - THE SCHOOL CALENDAR HAS BEEN AMENDED

DATES for your

Diary...

Friday 24th May Sports Awards Dinner Tuesday 28th May PTG AGM Friday 31st May Bangkok Patana AGM Monday 3rd June HM Queen Suthida’s birthday (holiday) Wednesday 5th June Patana United Thursday 6th June Patana Primary Concert Friday 21st June End of Year Whole School Assembly

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CREATIVE CODING CHALLENGE Romeu Barros, Computing Teacher

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ast week, we finally received the results for the FOBISIA Creative Coding Challenge 2018-2019.

Around twenty extremelly talented Bangkok Patana programmers from both Primary and Secondary Schools, joined the event this year. In our school students got involved in the Coding Challenge from December 2018 and their participation culminated during the first week of February 2019, when they submitted their programs.

Three industrious IB students, Arnav Jhaveri (12M), Sarina Sujita (12J) and Chawin Asavasaetakul (12J) dealt with the logistics of the event and were responsible for its success. From a teaching pesrpective, it is always good to observe students develop skills in whatever platform they are given (this year the suggestion was the use of Metaverse). The event is best described by three participants from Secondary: “Brainstorming was a key part of our project as we had never used this software before and we wanted to explore the possibilities of creating different programs in the very first session, we overdid it and were a little too ambitious in what we wanted to create, but it was a good experience to be able to develop fully all our ideas. We ended up creating an escape room scenario where a student was locked in a classroom and had to solve a series of riddles/questions to find the key and escape. Through this experience, we learnt a lot about the fundamentals of problem-solving and developed our ability to think logically. It was an amazing experience and we are both extremely proud of the outcome.” - JingWen (12B) & Tavisha (10T) 6

“I learnt a lot from FOBISIA Coding Competition. It was a really cool experience for me and I am so glad I signed up for it. I think that doing this was a learning experience because I had never done anything like this before, so I had to learn as I went. There are a lot of things that I wish I could have integrated into my work, but I am still happy with my final product. It was interesting how my ideas changed and morphed as I did this project. At first, I thought I could make a murder mystery with hints and clues along the way, but I realised it would be difficult to integrate the hints, so I decided to create a murder mystery which turned into a treasure hunt. This would have several mini puzzles along the way, instead of one extremely difficult one. After getting feedback from my classmates and family, I added clues in case the players needed them. I also added a bit underwater where they were searching for the treasure and had to go in several directions. Only after they had gone in the first four directions could they explore the last one. I added objects to collect in each direction, and programmed it so you could only proceed once you had them. Once you proceeded, you would use them to find the cave where the treasure actually was.

Unfortunately, there was an evil mastermind there, too.

He would make you solve his riddles, and if you couldn’t, you failed. Except you didn’t. In real life, you could restart and have several attempts. So, that is my story.” - Cody Finnegan (7S)

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#122: “Hey Google – How’s My Day?” A

pologies for not writing a Tech Tip last week. I spent four days over the long weekend on the University of Bath Masters course here at school and needed the time to focus solely on one thing. I don’t know how many of our community use Google Assistant, but I find it a useful tool and so I thought I’d share with you how I use it in my everyday life. When I’m getting ready for work in the morning, I ask the Google mini speaker in our kitchen “How’s my day” and I’m told information about the weather, how long it will take for me to get to work (Google knows from pinning the school as my place of work on Google maps). Then the audio version of the daily news is played from the channels I’ve chosen: BBC, CNET and Wired. You don’t have to have a Google smart speaker to do this – you can do it on your phone using the Google Assistant app (Apple or Android). Listening to the news with my family in the morning is a great way to keep abreast of current affairs, with the added bonus that they’re also getting ready to go to school on time. I’m not sure this multitude of tasks would be as efficient if they were watching the news instead. Listening affords you the ability to do something else (eg tying your shoelaces) at the same time. In the car the Google assistant is useful to answer calls with your voice and send ‘hands-free’ text messages – not that I recommend the latter, unless it’s an emergency.

One of the Wired audio stories referenced the parental struggle and peer pressure our kids receive when playing popular video games. I’ve linked it below so that you can gain perspective on what other parents are going through.

It’s only seven minutes long and well worth it.

Have a great weekend.

Brian Taylor Assistant Principal, Campus Curriculum Technology Integration Links in this article: https://assistant.google.com/ https://player.fm/series/wired-1321961/facing-the-ubiquity-of-fortnite-in-our-kids-lives

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UNI COUNSELLORS’ CORNER UNI OFFERS...

Congratulations on offers from

PASUT (PROUD) SUDLAHBA

University College London, University of Bath, University of Manchester, University of Winchester to study Architecture

Proud has been active in leadership roles as Co-President of Habitat for Humanity and a senior TigerShark where he has been a role model and mentor for many younger swimmers.

Proud is looking forward to following in his uncle’s footsteps as an architect having accepted the offer to study architecture at University College London.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT...

University of British Columbia, Canada The University of British Columbia (UBC) is famed not just for its wonderful climate and stunning campuses but also the eight Nobel prize winners and three Canadian Prime Ministers (including current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau) the school has produced, its outstanding research facilities including the national particle and nuclear physics laboratories, marine research lab and it houses one of the largest libraries in North America.

Tryggvason, Prime Ministers Kim Campbell (Canada’s first female Prime Minister), John Turner and Justin Trudeau, and Nobel laureates in Chemistry, Physics and Economic Sciences.

UBC is striving towards a sustainable model for the school, instituting green policies such as recycling water, solar power, and buildings integrated into their environment with a goal to reducing their ecological footprint.

UBC has two campuses; thee Vancouver campus and the Okanagan campus located in Kelowna. The Vancouver campus is the larger of the two, accommodating more than 85% of UBC students. Recently, 23% of students at the Vancouver campus and around 13 percent at the Okanagan campus were international. UBC was also recently recognised as the most international university in North America, with international students making up over one third of the total student body.

UBC was listed second in Canada in the US News & World Report colleges ranking for 2019 and 29th globally, and 37th in the Times Educational Supplement rankings. UBC has produced many notable alumni, including philanthropist Rick Hansen, astronaut Bjarni

UPCOMING UNIVERSITY VISITS UNIVERSITY / COLLEGE

University of Cambridge Annual Patana University Fair

COUNTRY

UK Thailand

LOCATION

TBC CON 301 - CON 307

DATE

TIME

18.09.19 19.09.19

12:15 13:00

CLICK TO READ MAY’S CAREERS NEWSLETTER 8

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STUDENTS SPEAK

Why Don’t Some People Remember Their Dreams?

By Karnsiree (Ling Ling) Chen, Year 12

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ost of us have remembered a dream at least once, and may even have had a particularly vivid dream that you still remember to this day, though it happened years ago. However, if you were asked to recall a dream you had yesterday you may draw a blank. This leads us to wonder: why exactly do we remember some dreams and not others? Do lingering dreams have any significance?

For many, dreams are recalled as hazy images, prone to slipping away in the harsh light of day. Even those who can recollect past dreams in elaborate detail can wake some days with almost no memory of the dreamscapes we entered throughout the night. Despite commonly perpetuated suspicions, the cause of this immediate amnesia is not ethereal but more biological.

Sleep is a complicated process whereupon our resting brains go through a rollercoaster of mental states, with some parts being full of mental activity. Dreaming is thought to occur during a state called Rapid Eye Movement (REM) which can mirror some of the signs of being awake. During REM sleep, the eyes twitch rapidly, there are changes in breathing and circulation, and the body enters a paralysed state known as atonia. It happens in 90-minute-waves, and is when our brains tend to enter the realm of dreams.

The cortex, which fills our dreams with their content, and the limbic system, which processes our emotional state 10

receive extra blood flow during REM sleep. They fire with electrical activity whilst the frontal lobes (which direct our critical faculties) are quiet. This is why we blindly accept the often ludicrous narratives our brains concoct during sleep.

A chemical component, Nondrenaline, is the answer to why some dreams are retained and others aren’t. It is a hormone that primes the body and mind for action, and our levels of it are naturally lower in deep sleep. We dream most vividly in REM sleep, where levels of nondrenaline are lowest in the brain. We may actually be dreaming right before we wake up – but our morning routines actually get in the way of remembering the imagery. Being startled out of sleep by an alarm clock has a detrimental effect on the retention of dreams, causing them to quietly slip out of our minds amidst the chaos of our morning routines which cause a spike in nondrenaline levels.

If you do want to remember your dreams, you should attempt to to lie still and “float” in a state of semiconciousness on the line between sleep and being awake. During this time, do your best to remember your dreams. This process allows you to review the dream as you transition into a conscious state, and therefore will remember it like any other memory.

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STUDENTS SPEAK EXCERPTED FROM SCIENTIA MAGAZINE

Potato chips, a mild drug

By Momiji Uji, Year 12 DISCLAIMER: If you are British, the ‘chips’ I will be referring to are crisps and not the French fries!

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am sure we have all been guilty of finishing one whole packet of chips by ourselves when intuitively we know that they are high in calories and overeating is bad for our body. There are even people who ‘cannot live’ without eating this snack, to the extent that there are individuals who have been eating it every day for the last 20 years or that they need to buy about 100 bags a week to keep them satisfied.

Potato chips have the ‘power’ to drive people into craving them constantly and needing to have them nearby. Potato chips and other hyperpalatable foods are now being referred to as a ‘mild drug’, as they can be as addictive as tobacco or alcohol. How exactly does this toxic and addictive ‘power' control our body? What are the mechanisms behind it?

Just how calorie dense are potato chips? Although the number of calories highly depends on the flavour and brand, on average, a packet of Lays (original) in Thailand weighs about 75g, which is 402 calories. This amount equates to eating half a stick of butter. If you eat 2 packets every day along with your regular daily meals, you can gain to up to 3kg of weight in a month.

Why is it impossible to only eat one potato chip? Read the rest of the article on the student Scientia magazine.

Safeguarding and Entry Into School

Just a reminder that if you don’t have your Patana Card, please get a Visitor’s Pass from the Security Desk. For security of our children and safety, you should not use the card of another family member.

Also a reminder to please inform reception if you have changes to staff who were registered for Patana cards. Any staff that were registered and have left your employment must be removed from the list. Please contact reception@patana.ac.th.

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the m o r f st The late

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PTG

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Join the PTG Facebook page here!

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om the r f e r o Even m

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PTG

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Join the PTG Facebook page here!

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COMMUNITY

NEILSON HAYS BOOK SALE 25TH &26TH MAY 9.30AM - 4.00PM

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For daily updates, snapshots and news on life at school you can find us here...

643 Lasalle Road (Sukhumvit 105) Bangna Tai, Bangna, Bangkok 10260 THAILAND Tel: +66 (0) 2785 2200 Fax: +66 (0) 2785 2399 www.patana.ac.th Email: reception@patana.ac.th 16

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