IGBIS Newsletter, Issue 237

Message from the Head of School

Mrs Anne Fowles, Head of School

Dear IGBIS Families,

Earlier this week you may have seen the announcement that I will be departing IGBIS at the end of this school year. 

It has been my privilege to be the founding head of school at IGB International School and see our vision for the school come to fruition over the past eight years. IGBIS is the leading IB school in Malaysia and we have built an amazing community where inclusion, innovation and service are part of the school fabric.  

With experienced teaching and administrative teams in place, I believe that the school is ready to move to the next level with another person at the helm. With COVID-19 restricting travel around the world, I would like to spend some time with my family in New Zealand, before exploring other options for the future. The school board is engaging international school recruitment experts to assist with the search for a new head of school.

I look forward to catching up with you all and to seeing more of our aspirations turn into reality before the school year ends in June 2021.

This week, two more of our teachers arrived in Malaysia and started quarantine. We hope that very soon they will all be in the country and in school. Meanwhile, our students were able to spend a little more time outside either in their break time or at lunchtime. It is great to see them more active around the school after weeks observing protocols inside the same classroom most of the day.

IGBIS Celebrates 4 Years of Being an Imagination Foundation Chapter with Another Annual Week of Play!

Aga Chojnacka, Primary Years Programme Coordinator

In 2017 IGBIS  chose to become an Imagination Foundation Chapter. Our motivation was a strong belief that every child is unique, competent and creative and deserves a right to play, experiment and investigate the world around them. Imagination Foundation Chapters use creative play, design thinking, tinkering and making to develop the natural powers of creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation that all children possess. Chapter projects and initiatives can focus on numerous themes,  areas of the curriculum and international campaigns. However, the most engaging projects spark from a child’s interests and passions. Simple projects may take two hours to complete; others may take weeks. As projects become more complex, children tackle real-world problems and follow a design thinking process to tinker, prototype,  kickstart business and social ventures.

Why and How Do We Celebrate the Week of Play?

The IGBIS community values play and creativity as unique ways of expressing human ingenuity. Together, with other play-inspired Imagination Foundation Chapters around the world and inspired by the short film, ‘Caine’s Arcade’, we have organized the Global Cardboard Challenge and Day of Play. These are annual events presented by the Imagination Foundation to celebrate children’s creativity and the role communities can play in fostering and promoting it. In September and October, children of all ages and their families were invited to build and play with anything they can think of (and find in our well-stocked playground), using cardboard, recycled materials and their imagination. Since 2017, we have spent a Saturday morning, sometime in early October, playing as a community, with all our learners and their families. It’s always been a day of playing, laughing, tinkering, designing, sharing and telling stories of inspiration and wonder. This year due to our special circumstances we turned this into a week-long event celebrated during a school week, in classrooms, brand new ES Design Lab and in virtual learning environments (Flipgrid/Seesaw). Children will get a chance to work with programmable robots, design and build marble runs, play with cardboard and virtual reality among other exciting things we have planned for them.

IT Corner

Technology is moving. Once you think you’ve learned enough, you realize haven’t learned even a fraction of it. This is something that teachers have found, and something that even those who work in the industry have found.

At IGBIS, we are keeping up with the latest developments in technology, and we’re doing it in spades. Here I’ll explain how both the people and the underlying tech is gaining steam.

The IT Team

We have an ad hoc committee formed that will be working together, and with the rest of the community, throughout the year.

• Steve Harvey is our in-house tinkerer, the teacher behind Maker Space, and helps elementary teachers with their various questions.
• Craig Morgan joins us as a Design Teacher, who is quite a capable technician himself, with a strong background in technology stacks.
• Flavia Godja is a very keen sharer of all things technology, who has recently given two professional development opportunities to staff.
• Maria Galvis, who we call MJ, has a strong background in Educational Technology, having a range of positions at previous international schools. She’s joining us as a Design teacher.
• Marcus Wetherell, as Head of Design, provides valuable input into various stages of all of our processes.
• Navin, Jun and Uma provide constant technical support, and resolve all of the Help Desk tickets for the whole school!
• Adam Morris (that’s me!) is your ICT Coordinator, who is quite pleased to be helping to lead the above team towards greater and greater things.

GSuite for Education: Google Docs, etc.

GSuite is undergoing various improvements, and we are eagerly looking forward to features that have been promised. There has been rapid development from Google towards improving its services, and we are loving all of it!

Among some of the changes happening from Google, students and teachers may in the following few months find some additional functionality, small changes to the user interface, and other things. In particular, we will be gaining more abilities to better serve our community. This is a long-planned, incremental adjustment to our underlying offerings.

Please note that, along with the above additions, there will be a feature reduction occurring over the weekend as well. Students will no longer be able to create Google Meet video conferences. This is in line with the recommendation from Google over best practices and is done to be compatible with the future additions that are happening.

IGBIS Face Mask: Pre-order Now

IGBIS face mask is antibacterial & reusable. It comes in two sizes; Adult & Kids (3-9 year-old)

Pre-order your IGBIS face mask now and get RM5 discount on your purchase (*RM20 only ~retail price: RM25). Pre-order starts from Sep’ 27th to Oct’ 4th, 2020.

Please fill in the pre-order form at https://forms.gle/bEExurHDHwPZALoo9 and you may collect your face mask(s) at the uniform shop starting on the Oct’ 5th, 2020 onwards.

*Note: Only who registered will benefits the discount.