How do we end the school year during the closure?
- Innovation: Start by asking questions and creating something new and better;
- Design thinking: Focus on people and use an iterative process to identify problems and find creative solutions;
- Entrepreneurship: Develop skills to start a social enterprise and expand creativity in an interdisciplinary environment;
- Activity: Participate in leisure activities to develop lifelong habits related to physical, mental, and social well-being and increase creativity;
- Service: Take action and drive change; be an active citizen by taking a business-like approach to improve people's lives in our communities.
This initiative was designed to develop KIS quality learning behaviors of our students.
- Strive for understanding;
- Take action ethically;
- Nurture passion in self and others.
Students worked in teams and created their companies for fundraising. We raised 52,000 Baht (about 1696 US dollars) last year. The money was deposited into our KIS service bank to support the ones in need in our community.
Shall the IDEAS project be continued?
There are many communities in Thailand who are impacted either financially and/or psychologically because of COVID-19. Will we miss our opportunity if we don't guide our students to take action ethically and strive for understanding? How can we support them to advocate a social issue and nurture passion in self and others? I reviewed the IDEAS project and wanted to find out if there is a work-around for us to launch the IDEAS project virtually. After brainstorming and exchanging ideas with my colleagues, we came up with five choices for our students to be involved with social learning. One of the key element is that they need to work with either a partner or a team. In the real world, we always need to work with someone else and this is also an opportunity to build sustainable connection through their project making.
What are the project options?
We are all responding to Covid differently. Some of us find that the arts are the best way to express our feelings and thoughts at this time. Students are invited to create a work of art thinking about their experiences or advocating a social issue during this lockdown. They can be anything at all; personal, political, emotional, abstract. Their art can also be in any medium they like: paint, pencil, digital, sculpture, photography, comic, song writing, poetry, music composition, film, etc. Their artwork will be made into an online exhibition and, if they wish, it can be auctioned for charity.
To celebrate KIS and our fantastic community, it would be great if students can get creative to support an online gallery, and also get the chance for their design to be made into an official KIS T-shirt. Students are invited to produce a piece of art that incorporates KIS Wolf Mascot and COVID 19 related theme (e.g. social justice, inequality, kindness, loneliness, etc.) Students can produce the artistic design in absolutely any style and in any medium they want. The T-shirt design must be approved by the Marketing team and a group of judges. There is only one winning design. The money raised from selling the t-shirt will be used to support our refugee community.
If students like building Minecraft, this is a great opportunity for them to learn about and respond to issues related to COVID-19! Participants can create Minecraft and address one of the challenges below. They need to submit a 3-minute video of their final product. The Minecraft challenge idea is directly from North America Scholastic Esports Federation. I added the fifth challenge. Students and teachers need to reimagine how the learning environment might be different when we return to campus again. It will be very unnatural (and potentially unlikely) if we just get back to the old routine without acknowledging the lockdown!
- Stuck @ Home
- What is COVID-19?
- Future Medical Facility
- Inform the Public
- Reimagine and recreate school after COVID-19
Students want to be change-makers and support an organization to make a social impact. However, they don't have enough money and need to raise the funds in order to make a difference. For example, they might want to support a street food vendor in Bangkok by ordering food to support vulnerable community members who are impacted financially due to COVID-19. In this way, they get to support two groups of people simultaneously. But they need the funds! Students will create a campaign for crowdfunding, leading a project to raise small amounts of money from a larger number of people. In order to get donations, they need to inform the audience about the organization they are supporting, the purpose of the action, and most importantly, how they funds will be used. This idea is inspired by StartSomeGood.
Sometimes students might not have a clear idea of what they want to do to help people yet. Therefore, they can work with a partner or a team to identify any topic or interest of their choice for research. They also get to decide the format of their final product to share their learning. The requirements are outlined below:
- They must collaborate with a partner or team.
- They need to share your final product with the KIS community.
What are the activities?
- Teacher baby photo quiz;
- Quarantine song playlist competition;
- Kahoot competition;
- Lip syncing battles by our House captains and vice captains;
- Scavenger hunt;
- Virtual field trips (Since so many museums are open for virtual visit, why not take this advantage to visit them!)
- Instagram photo challenge (#VirtualLearning Portraits)
- TikTok before and after trend challenge (I do have some reservation about the TikTok video regarding internet child safety.)