The End of an Era

After nearly 220,000 hits, readers in every country on the planet, mentions in global media, nominations for awards and recognition from  teachers and students worldwide… 6SS@NIST is shutting down. The reasons behind this are to do with every class in the school having blogs that look the same and every class in the school having blogs with similar URL addresses. The 6SS blog can now be found here: http://blogs.nist.ac.th/6ss/.

This blog has had an amazing effect on my teaching over the past three years and it has led to some amazing experiences for my students and I:

• the students telling us about the fires, explosions, riots and general violence surrounding their homes two years ago: http://6ssatnist.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/what-has-your-day-been-like/
• the amazing philosophical thinking in the Sponge vs. Stone postings: http://6ssatnist.wordpress.com/?s=sponge+stone
• the “essays” that students wrote as comments in response to Angela Maier’s article about Mallory Fundora ( and Mallory’s comments herself) http://6ssatnist.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/homework-read-think-share/
  
• The students reactions to Robyn Treyvaud’s presentation about online safety and then Robyn’s reaction to their comments: http://6ssatnist.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/reacting-to-robyn-treyvaud/#comments
• The advice that 6SS students gave to students at Mt. Scopus Memorial College as they prepared for their first PYP Exhibition: http://6ssatnist.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/advice-for-other-year-6grade-5-students/

Blogging has helped my students and I by:

• Giving us a place to react to and think about things at any time, and from anywhere
• Allowing us to express ourselves without being interrupted or told we’re wrong
• Allowing us to develop our thinking in a way that was not really possible before
• Giving us a place to share our interests, our creativity and our ideas
• Giving us an audience of real people who would read and respond to our writing
• Connecting us with other people
• Giving us a way to make homework more fun and more connection to what we do in class
• Giving us the possibility to do “online learning” when it was not possible to come to school
• Helping us to stay in touch during holidays

What effect did 6SS@NIST have on you?

Homework – The Ideal Teacher

This afternoon I would like you to take a look at a blogging project Mr Will and I are starting up.

We would like you to go to the blog, read the post and leave a comment on the post (not on the 6SS blog).

To get to the blog click on the picture below

Extending the “Together We Can” Slogan

6SS have been thinking about what is needed in order for Thailand to emerge from the current situation as a better and stronger country. Today, we shared all of our ideas for how to extend the “Together We Can” slogan that was used to generate interest in the “Big Cleanup” on Sunday. The  students discussed what all of the causes of last week’s events were and tired to look behind the media, the gossip, the rumours and the colours.

By sharing their ideas they have formed seven new slogans:

“Together we can rethink about the choices we make.”

“Together we can all have a voice.”

“Together we can respect and care for eachother.”

“Together we can earn the trust of other people in the world.”

“Together we can make Thailand a cleaner place than before.”

“Together we can bring back the land of smiles.”

“Together we can correct our mistakes.”

A question for our audience: what do you think about these slogans? What effect do you think they could have? Could they be improved? Are they clear enough?

Homework – Tomorrow’s Spot-Check

View this document on Scribd

Your job tonight is to do as much work as you can towards being prepared for tomorrow’s spot-check. Use your time well, make the most of it – it is precious!

Make a comment to tell us what work you did towards your presentation. Explain what you did in detail. Read other people’s comments and share ideas.

Adding Useful Categories and Tags

If you put the right category on your postings, it will be easy for us to find them once they have “disappeared” from the front page of the Blog.

If you add useful tags to your posting, it will make it even easier to find postings that are relevant to what you’re searching for.

DO IT EVERY TIME!!!

30,000 HITS

HEY GUYS

If you realized that we have got 30,000 hits

30,000

30,000

Coming 40,000

We need a celebration!

Involving Girls in Plain English-Ranvir, Johann, Mick

This is our In plain english video that we managed to complete after 9 tries in 45 minutes. We had lots of fun and some few silly moments.

It is about involving boys and girls playing together

Hopes and Fears for your Local Area

List some of the things you like and some of the things you dislike about your local area.

Idenfity three hopes you have for the future of your local area.

Identify three fears that you have about the future of your local area.

Bonus: Can you go out in your local area and take photographs of the things you like and dislike? Could you make a video? Could you present your work in a Pecha Kucha style using PowerPoint or Prezi?

Photograph taken using Google Earth

Word of the Day – My Thoughts

Today’s Word of the Day is “discrepancy” which means a difference between two things. So, there is a discrepancy when two things are different in some way or ways.

When I was checking the homework you did last night, I realized that there is a HUGE discrepancy between the quality of your homework now and the quality of your homework at the start 0f the year.

Last night’s homework was really impressive and it really showed me how much better you have become at writing, reflecting and expressing your ideas, thoughts and feelings in writing. I believe this is because of all the work you have done on the Blog. I was blown away, and it just proves to me how powerful blogging is. It has made you all so confident.

Home Work Bonus

For the homework I discussed with my mum about the sentence and we came up with:

”Choices make you, you”