Island School Newsletter - 28th June 2011

Dear Parents,

This is our last Newsletter of a very successful year at Island School. You can look through past editions to see the achievements of our students described and celebrated. It is an interesting reminder of how many activities the students are involved in.

At the end of a year it is time to bid farewell to those whose time at Island School has come to an end. For those who are moving to another school in a different country, we wish the best of luck in the next challenge. Our largest group of leaving students is, of course, our graduating class. Many of them know already what they are doing next year. Many will also be waiting for the IB results which come out in early July to see if they have got the grades they have been hoping for. We wish them all the best of luck and hope to hear of their future successes.

Among the staff we are saying goodbye to a small group of teachers. Cathy Cheng is moving to South Island School, Julia Surman is going to tend cows on Lamma Island, Rebecca Cottam is going to Sha Tin School and Calvin Shaw is moving to Milan. We wish them all a good move and hope their new schools welcome them as well as Island School has. We are also saying goodbye to two of our support staff who have reached retirement: Mr Tin, who is our senior campus workman, and Alex Wai who has taken on a variety of roles at Island School. Alex’s career here is something rather special to celebrate. He joined Island School as an 18 year old in 1969. At that time the current buildings were not even built and the school was across the road in the old British Military Hospital. Alex has seen the school move into what was originally only blocks 3 and 4, and been involved in every step as the school gradually grew to its current size. After 42 years here, he is certainly the longest serving member in the ESF, and we thank him for his devotion to the school over all those years.

I would like to wish all our families a happy and enjoyable summer break. I look forward to seeing you back again in August.

Chris Binge - Principal

Success for IB Design and Technology Student

Kelsey Yuen, one of our current Year 13 students and G.O.D., Hong Kong are currently working together with the possibility that the company will produce and sell the lighting product that she designed and made for her IB Design and Technology coursework.

Hopefully we will see Kelsey’s product in shops in the near future.

Well done Kelsey!

Matthew Smith - Head of Design & Technology

Junior Debate

On Saturday June 18th, the Island School Junior Debate Team took two teams to compete in South Island School’s junior interschool debate. The teams consisted of this:

Island School 1
1.       Brian Wong - 9W
2.       Chun Yu Yiu - 8W
3.       Rafael Pang - 8D
4.       Yuyan Huang - 8E

Island School 2
1.       Janice Leung - 9D
2.       Vinson Yew - 9R
3.       Odetta Li - 8R
4.       Hyung Joo Ahn - 8N

Island School sent 2 teams to the Interschool debate. After many late nights, days and days of endless and tiring preparation, dozens of after school and lunch time debate meetings, the two teams headed off to South Island School for the debate.
The teams competed in three motions to attempt to enter the semi finals. The motions were as followed:

1.       Motion One Impromptu: This House would ban compulsory homework (Island School 1 Opposition, Island School 2 Proposition)
2.       Motion Two Prepared: This House believes that the HK government is not doing enough to close the gap between the rich and poor (Island School 1 Opposition, Island School 2 Proposition)
3.       Motion Three Prepared: This House supports random drug-testing in schools (Island School 1 Proposition, Island School 2 Opposition)

We believed that we had acquired much experience in the debates and are striving to improve on our weakness - teamwork. We identified and understood that despite our individual strengths, the coherence amongst our team mates still has room for improvement.

However we must congratulate Brian Wong of 9W and Vinson Yew of 9R for winning two T-Shirts in the debate for being in the top 20 Best Speakers of the Tournament. Brian came joint 6th with two other speakers; Vinson came joint 19th. We are sure they really shone on stage and fully delivered the spirit of Island School Debating: Rational but never dominating; passionate but never impertinent.

Although Island School did not manage to be in the finals for this Interschool Debate, we are sure that with effort, practice, and determination, Island School's potential is yet to be fully explored and delivered.

May we now wish good luck to our next year's team, and bid a warm farewell to our beloved Captain, Brian Wong, and members Janice Leung and Vinson Yew, as they move up to Year 10 next year.

Island School Junior Debate Club
Yu Yan Huang - 8E, Brian Wong - 9W

On Thursday 16th June, Island School saw it’s first ever piano competition. Ten students from years 7-9 performed a wide range of very challenging piano music from Allegro con brio – first movement from sonata in Bb, Op. 24, No. 2 by Clementi to Presto, third movement from sonatina, Op.13, No. 1 by Kabelevsky The ten students had been chosen from a large number of lower school students who competed in rounds over three lunchtime in open recitals.

Congratulations to the ten finalists who were:
Jacqui Lee - 7D
Andrea Chin - 7D
Christine Wong - 7F
Claudia Lau - 7R
Jenny Kang - 7R
Florence Li - 8D
John Tang - 8N
Odetta Li - 8R
Adriel Fung - 8R
Julia Colfer - 9R

Please see photograph album...here

On Thursday 26th May, a group of young jazz musicians from Berklee College of music came to Island School and performed for the year 10 Music students. Lee Dynes on guitar, Nathan Wong on the drums and Callum Mackenzie on alto saxophone played their own semi-improvised compositions and impressive jazz pieces. The skilled musicians talked to us about the fun and amazing time they have at Berklee, where two of our year 13 students are headed to next year (Hannah Pho and Jason Wu). They talked about the high quality theory teaching from professionals, the relaxed and entertaining courses in which students can choose their favourite area of study or genre and the different personalities of people who choose different courses.

The pieces they played included very virtuostic playing from the saxophone, clean and consistent plucking from the acoustic-electric guitar and rapid playing from the drummer. Complicated and impressive variations of timing and rhythm were used to the maximum and unique jazz harmony came up everywhere. One of their pieces – composed by Callum Mackenzie – was in odd metre, 11/4. It sounded very complicated indeed and at one point the band played two beats per bar, then three beats per bar, then four, five, six, seven, eight and then finally a conclusive jump to back to the 11/4 meter. The way the band played so comfortably and effectively together, not making a single slip up amazed every student.

At the end of the performance, the Jazz Tellers gave out leaflets with details of gigs in Hong Kong and encouraged us to see them play outside school. I went with a group of friends to Lan Kwai Fong to see them and with another outstanding performance; we were given free CDs of their album. The Jazz Tellers have inspired many of us GCSE students to pursue music in the future, especially in Jazz and Blues. We were very privileged to see them play and to be inspired by such wonderful young musicians.

Tom Basford - 10D

Facebook have done it again - adding face recognition software to the range of tools.  Called Tag Suggestions, the program digitally scans the faces in photos and suggests who they are so that you can tag them. The company claims that this feature makes it a lot easier for users to label and share photos. But it also makes it a lot easier for teens' online identity to get away from them.

Let's say you go to a party and everyone is snapping away photos on their mobile.  Next day thanks to Facebook, face recognition and easy tagging your "party experiences" are being broadcast across the Internet.  Is this what you want? Can you rely on your friends' to know, understand and to have set appropriate privacy settings?  What about their friends, or the friends of those friends?  While Facebook does notify users when they're tagged -- after the fact -- you still have to go in and un-tag yourself if you don't want to be identified. Facebook is a leaky bucket people, no matter how you configure your privacy settings!   You may have a case of photos gone wild and need to find ways to combat them!!

The message here is NOT, "Don't share photos on Facebook", but "Think about what photos you share on Facebook and the impact they may have on you and your friends should they be seen by a different audience".  Increasingly universities and employers are using social networking to get an understanding of the person they are interviewing.  Showing an interviewer your Facebook page can even be part of an interview process. 

Treat the Internet as the most public space in the world and let that guide your attitudes and behaviours there.  Then you won't go far wrong.

How to Disable Tag Suggestions
From your Facebook page, click on Account.
Choose Privacy Settings.
Click on Customize Settings.
Scroll down to Things Others Share.
Next to Suggest photos of me to friends, click on Edit Settings.
Click on Disabled and click Okay.
You can also go a step further and bar Facebook from using your image to compare photos altogether by sending a note to the company

Mark Roper - Curriculum Leader for Technology

For information on important dates and reminders please visit the parents’ notices page on the school website…here 

Congratulations to the following Student Award Winners!

Gold

Yiu Chun Yu 8W

Michelle Simon 8R

Silver
Andrea Chin 7F
Claudia Chan 9D
Niamh Neville 7W

Hope Oliver 8D

Justin Chung 8W

Linda Zhu 8W

Rahil Zaveri 7N

Bronze
Takamasa Hoshiyana 8N
Anson Yan 8N

Odetta Li 8R

Siddhesh Kotkar 8N

親愛的家長,

歡迎瀏覽最後一期港島中學通訊。回顧過往的一年的通訊，看見同學們積極參與各項活動、發揮自我潛能、不斷地成長, 那份滿足感真非筆墨所能形容。願同學在各方面不斷突破自己，讓發展更全面！

學期將至，不少同學將遠赴海外升學， 在此衷心祝願他們前程錦繡,  勇於迎接未來的挑戰。而不少同學都等待著國際預科文憑試(IB) 七月初公佈的成績結果，看見他們的士氣和努力，希望他們將取得好成績。

我們將與部份員工告別，部分教師將調往其他校舍，2名輔助人員已達到退休年齡，我們感謝他們對本校多年的奉獻。

祝大家有個愉快和充實的暑假!

Chris Binge – 校長

6月16日星期4，港島中學舉辦了首個鋼琴比賽。Year7-9的學生都即極參與，並演奏了多首鋼琴曲目，包括Allegro con brio – first movement from sonata in Bb, Op. 24, No. 2 by Clementi to Presto, third movement from sonatina, Op.13, No. 1 by Kabelevsky。最後，十名學生擭選參與演奏會，恭喜以下入選同學：

Jacqui Lee - 7D
Andrea Chin - 7D
Christine Wong - 7F
Claudia Lau - 7R
Jenny Kang - 7R
Florence Li - 8D
John Tang - 8N
Odetta Li - 8R
Adriel Fung - 8R

Julia Colfer - 9R

活動照片...按此

5月26日星期4，一群年輕的爵士樂音樂家從Berklee College來到港島中學為Year10的同學演奏。除了分享音樂心得外，來賓更為同學的課程選擇提供意見。

他們演奏的曲目種類多元化，為本校學生帶來多個不同風格的爵士音樂。此活動啟發了同學們對爵士音樂的興趣。透過樂隊的演奏及介紹，希望同學能認識不同的爵士樂樂曲, 培養對爵士樂的興趣及觀賞爵士樂時的應有態度。

Tom Basford - 10D

Facebook，又稱臉書，是一個社會性網路網站，於2004年2月4日上線。
Facebook的創始人是朱克伯格 (Mark Zuckerberg)，他是哈佛大學的學生。最初，網站的註 冊僅限於哈佛學院的學生。在之後的兩個月內，註冊擴展到波士頓地區的其他院校。第二年，很多其他學校也被加入進來。最終，在全球範圍內有一個大學尾碼電子 郵箱的人（如 .edu, .ac.uk等）都可以註冊。之後，在facebook中也可以建立起高中和公司的社會化網路。而從2006年9月11日起，任何使用者輸入有效電子郵寄 地址和自己的年齡段，即可加入。使用者可以選擇加入一個或多個網路，比如中學的、公司的、或地區的。

據2007年7月資料，facebook在所有以服務於大學生為主要業務的網站中，擁有最多的用戶為大約3400萬活躍用戶（包括在非大學網路中的使用者）。從2006年9月到2007年9月間，該網站在全美網站中的排名由第60名上升至第7名。同時facebook是美國排名第一的照片分 享網站，每天上載850萬張照片。這甚至超過其他專門的照片分享網站。

網站的名字facebook來自傳統的紙質「花名冊」。通常美國的大學和預科學校把這種印有學校社區所有成員的「花名冊」發放給新來的學生 和教職員工，說明大家認識學校的其他成員。 2010年10月，facebook宣佈用家能夠下載曾經發表過的文字、相片等資料到電腦中。

Mark Roper - 信息和通信技術課程主管

學生學習成就 - IB設計和技術科

Kelsey Yuen是Year 13的同學，她和G.O.D. 公司正商討合作模式，G.O.D.公司可能生產並銷售她在IB設計與科技課程的照明產品。
希望在不久的將來，我們會在G.O.D. 商店看到Kelsey的產品。

Matthew Smith -設計與技術科主管

港島中學於6月18日星期6派出兩隊成員，前往參加南島中學的初中辯論比賽。兩隊成員名單如下：

港島中學1
1.       Brian Wong - 9W
2.       Chun Yu Yiu - 8W
3.       Rafael Pang - 8D
4.       Yuyan Huang - 8E

港島中學2
1.       Janice Leung - 9D
2.       Vinson Yew - 9R
3.       Odetta Li - 8R
4.       Hyung Joo Ahn - 8N

為以最佳壯態出賽，兩隊成員不惜日以繼夜苦心練習，於比賽當天順利完成三個項目，試圖進入半決賽。 我們除了從中得到不少比賽經驗外，亦得以進一步提升辯論技巧、團隊合作和資料分析方面的能力。

在此要恭賀9W 的Brian Wong和9R 的Vinson Yew，他們被列舉於20 Best Speakers of the Tournament並贏得T-Shirts。 相信，憑著累積的經驗，我們必定能夠再次面對挑戰和困難，並取得更好的成績。

Island School Junior Debate Club
Yu Yan Huang - 8E, Brian Wong - 9W

恭喜以下獲獎學生

金獎

Yiu Chun Yu 8W

Michelle Simon 8R

銀獎
Andrea Chin 7F
Claudia Chan 9D
Niamh Neville 7W

Hope Oliver 8D

Justin Chung 8W

Linda Zhu 8W

Rahil Zaveri 7N

銅獎
Takamasa Hoshiyana 8N
Anson Yan 8N

Odetta Li 8R

Siddhesh Kotkar 8N