We celebrated Computer Science Education Week in the library across this week. The theme of this year’s Computer Science Education Week is #CSforGood- which centers around an exploration of the ways that computer science can be used to create a “more equitable and sustainable world” (CSforGood).  Many students created short videos they posted to a closed video-sharing platform called Flipgrid in answer to these questions:

• Can you think of any problems in your own life that could be solved or helped using computer science?
• What’s a recent example you’ve seen where technology was used to help solve a pressing problem somewhere in the world?
• Do you think there are ways to use computer science in addressing big issues like healthcare, access to clean water, or poverty?​

Students also used their creativity and problem-solving skills to explore a wide range of hands-on activities, including coding, using modular robotics cubes called Cubelets, designing with 3Doodlers, building radios with Snap Circuit Pro, and more!

The roof repairs to the library are now complete and beginning this Thursday, 5 December, we will be welcoming everyone back to our renovated space! Thank you to all our community members for your patience with this process. Our coffee bar will be ready by the end of the week, too!

We will be OPEN this Saturday for our usual Saturday hours:
9:00-14:00

Please take advantage of this amazing community resource and come with the whole family. We have something for everyone, including board games, a Lego creation area, books for all ages (including board books for tiny humans and lots of adult fiction and non-fiction). We also have air con for the hot days so you can be comfortable while enjoying the space.

Next week we will be celebrating Computer Science Education Week (this used to be Hour of Code Week) in the library. Come have a peek and feel welcome to play with any of the tech tools and activities we will have on offer, including 3-Doodler pens, robotics kits, Cubelets, MakeyMakeys, circuitry kits, augmented reality coloring, and more. We look forward to welcoming everyone back in to our library.

​Our Grade 12 DP students recently shared their Extended Essay findings with Grade 11 students, who are now beginning their EE (extended essay) journeys! The extended essay is an in-depth, 4000 word (max) study of a focused topic chosen from one of the student’s IB Diploma subjects. For many of our students this research influences their choice of university studies and careers.
 
Ms. Murphy, DP Coordinator & EE Coordinator, and Ms. Maguire, Secondary School Librarian & EE Co-Coordinator, have already had two extended essay support classes for the Grade 11 students to introduce them to the nature of the extended essay and to begin interest inventories to help students decide upon a subject area. By January students will have preliminary research questions.
 
Over the next year, the Grade 11 DP students will have more than twenty support classes, focusing on the following topics:

• Understanding the nature of the Extended Essay
• IB Ethical Guidelines for Research
• Academic Honesty and the IB Diploma; Using Turnitin Similarity Index Reports
• Choosing a subject area
• Time management skills
• Understanding subject-specific assessment criteria and methodology
• Analyzing exemplar EE’s in the student's chosen subject area
• Writing a workable research question
• Unpacking the assessment criteria
• Selecting best research tools & using databases effectively
• Source evaluation
• How to read a scholarly (peer reviewed) article
• How to integrate quotes and secondary source material smoothly and effectively
• Review of strong paragraph writing
• Exploring different tools for making &  organizing notes
• Introduction to different types of outlines (for analytical and investigative essays)
• Using citation tools, either Noodle Tools or ZBib, to track citations
• How to write quality reflections (a required component of the EE)

 This past Tuesday we had an EE Parent Coffee Morning. For those who missed it, here is the link to our Extended Essay Libguide. The EE Presentation for Parents is on the home page of this guide. The password is aisl2019. Please contact either Ms. Murphy or Ms. Maguire with any questions!

The AISL Library will be closed through Sunday 1 December due to remediation work on the roof that needs to be completed.  You are very welcome to visit us in the Palm Pavilion during this time, where we have wifi, aircon, and indoor as well as outdoor workspaces. Classes and unit support will continue as scheduled.

We regret this inconvenience and look forward to welcoming everyone back as soon as possible.

Jill, Sam, Lunyunge, and I extend our deep gratitude to the many parents and students who volunteered hours of their time to help us sort and reshelve nearly 25,000 books across this Monday to Wednesday. My grandmother always said "many hands make labor light" and I appreciate her wisdom more than ever in light of what we accomplished as a community, which allowed us to speed the process along.  Even more important than books are the people in the library and we are excited to have you rejoin us in our renovated space!

We still have several projects that we will execute in the weeks ahead now that the building has been officially handed over to us. These projects include re-construction of the coffee bar and the building of treehouse / loft spaces for primary and secondary students. We will also construct some new shelving that will fit underneath the larger windows.

If you are new to AISL and have only visited us in our temporary Palm Pavilion space, please be sure to come see us now that we have moved back in. The space is bright, inviting, and comfortable! We have something for everyone! - Terry Maguire, Secondary School Librarian

We are bidding farewell to our temporary library in the Palm Pavilion. It has been a fantastic space from which to operate while we await the re-roofing & updates to the library. We thank you for your patience in advance while we shift spaces, unpack the containers, and finish up last projects in the library. We are aiming to welcome students back into the library by Wednesday of next week (and are continuing to offer library classes in classrooms in the mean t, but may need to shift this date slightly depending on final details. The coffee bar will be rebuilt in the library over the next couple weeks- stay tuned!

- How have Colin Kaepernick and Serena Williams raised awareness about "dreaming crazy"?
- What effect does tube length have on the velocity of a projectile in a vacuum bazooka?  
- To what extent can aeroponics be implemented in Zambia to combat food insecurity?

These are only a few of the questions explored by the Class of 2020 in their Extended Essays (EE's).  Students submitted their final versions on Friday 25 October, much to the relief of all involved! The EE is a challenging year-long project that engages students in topics of their own choosing and culminates in a 4,000-word research paper.  It's excellent preparation for university, and students will certainly appreciate its relevance to their future studies. Only a few more steps remain until it's officially done:

1. a final discussion, the "Viva Voce," with their supervisor,
2. the writing and submission of their reflective statements, and
3. a student-led EE celebration/presentation for parents and grade 11's - just in time for the whole process to start again with the Class of 2021!

If you're an interested Grade 11 or Grade 12 parent, the upcoming EE celebration will be on Monday 18 November (details regarding times and locations will be communicated next week).

The EE requires substantial development in academic integrity skills, so this was an important topic in a recent parent coffee morning.  The presentation, "Assessments and Academic Integrity in the DP", prompted thoughtful questions from parents and clarified how AISL supports our Diploma Programme (DP) students through the Internal Assessment (IA) submission process.   It also included details about:

• how exactly the IB creates marks out of 7,
• the three kinds of predicted grades issued at AISL,
• a brief intro to the IA calendar, and 
• information about academic honesty and an outline of the consequences for academic malpractice. 

Future coffee mornings will address the IA Calendar and DP exams in more detail.

One question arose about requesting remarks and retakes for DP exams and IAs.  To clarify, students who ask for a remark of their May exams or other assessment components will be awarded the remark score - even if it is lower than their original mark.  However, students who retake an exam or submit a new IA (during the November session) will be awarded whichever grade is higher.

As always, please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions, comments, or concerns.  You can reach me, the Diploma Program Coordinator, Monica Murphy, at mmurphy@aislusaka.org.

A wonderful subscription service our AISL Library offers is Tales2Go. Tales2Go provides instant, unlimited access to more than 7500 audio books that are easily searchable. The books are for ages 3 and up, and the collection is particularly rich for children, teens, and tweens. There are plenty of audio books in French and Spanish, too. Students can search by genre, series, title, grade level or age. The app offers the best user experience and all students have the Tales2Go app on their iPads. This is a streaming service, so although the audio books are not downloadable, an entire listening segment will load at a time, which provides roughly 1-2 hours of listening even when off line. Tales2Go audio books can be bookmarked so that if you have the app on your phone, as well, you can save bookmarks across devices. Last December The New York Times published this great piece about listening to a book versus reading it, which you might find interesting. The main take away: neither is superior and there is much overlap between both.

Every AISL student has a unique Tales2Go login that follows this format:
User name: graduation year + first initial + last name (example: 2025jsmith)
Password: zambia

If you need a hand getting set up, please see a member of our library team and we will gladly assist! Happy listening!