For those who have never looked at a Subject Report, I highly recommend it.
What?
A Subject Report is written after each examination session (November and May). It details how examination candidates performed worldwide, on each external and internal component of the course. It provides feedback to teachers and suggestions for how teachers can guide their students in the future. It also outlines the grade boundaries for each component.
Football may not have reached the status of a full-blown religion but it certainly attracts more spectators and enthusiasts than any other human activity, around the globe. A century ago, the founder of sociology Emile Durkheim predicted the inevitable wane of religion and the rise of national consciousness through moments of collective ‘effervescence’ or hysteria, such as our contemporary World Cup or Champions League final. Sport seems to encapsulate all the best and worst aspects of human nature and the original Olympic Games were far from being just friendly affairs between Greek gents of the day. Scandals about cheating athletes were most common and ancient sport commentators saw in such a deplorable attitude, a reflection of a morally depraved society. So, has anything changed and what, in 2010, do we expect out of our top sport personalities?
For most supporters, the victory of their team is all that matters, whatever the means employed to achieve that end. Maradona’s Hand of God or Thierry Henry’s qualifying hand against Ireland only confirm that in a world obsessed with material success, fair play and respect for the other team have ceased to be the most essential aspects of a football game. When Pele declared ‘Football is the beautiful game’, he certainly had in mind the skilful elegance demanded of the players but also the spirit of comradeship between team-mates as well as the friendly consideration due to any opposite team. Philosophers rarely use sports analogies but both Sartre and Camus somehow showed their true colours through their casual passing remarks about the game. For the author of Nausea, ‘football is complicated by the presence of the other team’ which is another way of reiterating his famous line ‘Hell is other people’’. For Sartre, who was not interested in sport, football is a continuation of the power struggle at play in most everyday situations, which strongly implies that any trick in the book can be used to demoralise or destabilise your opponents. Camus, on the other hand, was brought up with a love of the game that he played throughout his youth, in Algeria, before he became a dedicated supporter of the Paris Red Star football club, in the last 15 years of his life. Asked about his poor childhood days in Algiers, he surprisingly declared ‘All that I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football.’ … a feeling that, no doubt, Pele would surely share at a time when football has to rediscover its former power to unite millions around the athletic prowess of outstanding players who just happen to be decent individuals, too.
Once you have completed your analysis of the Mozart and the Copland, you can begin deciding what sections can be used to compare the two works.
Remember, in the 2011 Listening Paper, students will have the option to respond to a question about the Mozart or a question about the Copland. However, they must complete the comparison question.
The material in the Film Studies guide and the descriptors in the mark bands for this externally assessed evaluation are important to review for teachers and students, but in workshops people have found the checklists helpful and so I am reproducing them here. Part Two of the Film Studies course is focused on Film Theory and History . . . and the assessment for our students is a research project in the form of a documentary script. For those new to the course, this is the assessment that emphasizes the ‘International’ nature of the International Baccalaureate program. When beginning, the student will collaborate with the teacher to find and examine a film tradition that is unfamiliar to them. The project requires that the student look at films from more than one country, but the hope is that students will familiarize themselves with many different film cultures over the years of the course. As well it is important to begin this evaluation with a sound knowledge of what film theories are . . . and a solid overview of film history.
CHECKLIST: THE INDEPENDENT STUDY
Well, that might be a little harsh.
On the other hand, as my students would be quick to point out, in her new jet fighter installation Fiona Banner didn’t actually make anything, any more than Duchamp did almost a century earlier.
This is the third post on Corporate Social Responsibility and continues the discussion on Google’s announcement in January that they were no longer willing to censor results on Google.cn, their Chinese search engine. They made this strategic move under pressure from various stakeholder groups, who believed that any censorship was undemocratic, unethical and unsustainable.
Google decided that, on balance, preserving its positive corporate image at the expense of losing its presence in China was a risk worth taking, especially given that the Chinese market only represents a relatively small 2% of its annual $24bn revenue. Google began to direct all search traffic to their Hong Kong search engine and crossed their corporate fingers; hoping that the Chinese government would choose to ignore this for the sake of diplomatic advantage. However, the risk may not pay off for the company.
The key to the success of bullet proof glass lies in the way that the bullet’s kinetic energy can be spread over a large area.
Multiple layers of glass have layers of polycarbonate and other polymers such as polyurethane and polyvinyl butyral sandwiched between them.
While a checklist is not a replacement for reading the material in the Film Studies guide and sharing the criteria with your students, a number of teachers have found these checklists very handy when I’ve shared them in workshops, so I thought I’d share them here. Part One of the guide deals with Textual analysis and film language . . . our students have to learn the language of critical analysis of film. The assessment tool is the oral Presentation. For those who are new to the course, the students have a choice of 3 films. (The teacher picks the three films from a longer list that is published in the Coordinator’s notes in November, some of the films are new each year.) Having chosen their film, the student also picks 5 minutes from that film to focus on as the basis of their textual analysis.
CHECKLIST: PRESENTATON
One of the concerns about the course is a particular component that seems to be an ‘add-on’ in terms of how it is understood and delivered. That somewhat ‘dreaded’ Research Investigation seems to be an essay that is not dealt with until a specific time. Many teachers have the “it’s now time to write that IB Research Investigation essay because it counts for 25% of your mark…you have two months to get it done.”
Deadlines are given, deadlines are moved, students turn in rough drafts that are so rough, teachers find it a waste of everyone’s time.
Research is built into every single component and HL students find that much of their marks are based in how research was integrated and applied. Oddly enough, it seems that the PPP, the IPP and the TPPP (yes, it’s a lot of “P’s”) are linked more clearly in terms of how the assessment comes out of the core components. The Research Investigation seems to be put aside and dealt with as a separate part of the course.
Getting students to understand dramaturgical research is part of the core components and should help in terms of providing opportunities for students to understand the role of research in theatre.
If you have a specific unit that is being taught, then having students bring in research that they can apply and explore practically can strengthen their understanding.
When teachers can find ways to ask questions and have students provide the answers by supporting their choices with evidence, then links are being made.
If your unit of work is on Commedia, then assign a Commedia scenario to the class. Have students then bring in specific research on Commedia that could be applied to the text. Maybe one student provides information on status relationships, a few others look at specific stock characters in the scenario, another student brings in specific information about how lazzi’s are used, another how props and movement, another space and relationship to audience, etc…
Each student much state where they found their research and how effective it was when they focused it to the text.
They are now active, responsible contributors to the understanding of Commedia.
Academic Honesty is becoming quite a concern on many levels. Students must be held accountable for giving credit to where they have received their knowledge. The Research Investigation has built into the criterion an expectation that students are to attribute their sources throughout the essay.
Aims
It always amazes me when I discover that the solution to my problem is old school technology…in this case a good old fashioned answering machine/service.
I discovered last year that my language students really could not leave a proper message on a phone. And some of them even in their FIRST language could not. Indisputably and essential skill, I decided to start evaluating their speaking this way. Each week we chose a new topic to discuss and put that as a message on the school’s answering machine. The school gave me a dedicated voice box/extension for this. Students would call the school for homework, listen to the message and respond in one full minute of answer. They could call again if wanted or follow the prompts in the system which actually let you listen to your message and rerecord it is wanted.
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