SECONDARY NEWSLETTER I

Transcription

1 SECONDARY NEWSLETTER 25th January 2019 SCHOOL DIRECTOR S MESSAGE I N T H I S I S S U E : P A G E School Director 1-2 PTA News 3 Music Dynamics 4 Head of IT 5 Sports Director 6 Photos for PTA 7 UPCOMING EVENTS 21st 1st Feb Year 11 Mocks 26th Jan Liberation Day (PH) 2nd Feb IGCSE Art Exam 4th Feb House Colour Day 8th Feb Secondary House Basketball 11th-15th Feb Language and Mother Tongue Week 16th Feb Archbishop Janan Luwum (PH) 18th-23rd Mar Half Term Break; Ski Trip 25th 7th Mar DP 2 Mocks Exam 28th Feb ISSAK U20 All Stars KISU 1st March World Book Day: Math Day 4th March House Colour Day Open-mindedness As you know, our Guiding Statements are now centred on the 10 qualities outlined in the IB Learner profile. One of these, and one which recent surveys of parents, students and teachers suggest we deliver well on, is openmindedness: A learning community that is enriched by, and celebrates, its international-mindedness. The school commits to encouraging teachers and students to appreciate their own cultures and traditions and those of others. The school encourages students to seek, respect, explore, evaluate and be open-minded towards a range of points of views and to allow their own to be shaped and refined by what they find. Today, in the Christian tradition, it is the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul. For those of you who do not know the story, Saul (St Paul before his conversion to Christianity) was a notorious persecutor of Christ s followers in the time immediately after his crucifixion. He said himself: "For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers." (Galatians 1:13 14) He even admitted participating in the stoning to death of the first martyr, Stephen. However, one day on the road to Damascus, where he was mandated to carry out further persecutions of Jesus followers, Saul was blinded by a tremendous light and fell to the ground. He then heard a loud voice saying: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Saul remained blind for three days but, upon recovering his sight, he immediately became one of Jesus most ardent, resilient and loyal followers. He took the name Paul and travelled widely across the Middle East region, preaching and writing Christ s message and trying to encourage small but fragile bands of Christians that had begun to form in the region. He endured great suffering in this work, being imprisoned and eventually martyred for it.

2 Page 2 SCHOOL DIRECTOR S MESSAGE continued Although the story comes from my own Christian tradition, I think it has universal significance. To this day we use the phrase, To see the light to describe a moment of epiphany and it comes to us directly from this story. It is so important for the future betterment of our world that we educate our children to have the humility and open-mindedness to admit, like St Paul, when they are wrong. So much that is wrong with our world is caused by ignorance and arrogance, by a stubborn refusal to admit that one is wrong. Of course, I want us to develop young people at KISU who have a strong value set that they can rely upon to guide them through the moral and ethical challenges that adult life in our complex, selfish, adult world. But I want them to arrive at these values through a process of trial and error, being willing to admit when they come across a truer or wiser perspective and have the humility and open- mindedness to allow their own to be influenced or even changed by it. Ignorance, arrogance and obstinacy.have been at root of all tragedies in history Dalai Lama Steve Lang School Director Dear Parents and Guardians PTA NEWS Well done to you all for the amazing turnout on Wednesday for the third KISU PTA Positive Parenting Workshop, on the Accelerated Reader program. Thank you to Nic Walker for her presentation. A copy of the presentation will be circulated via the CPR network. Please us if you have not received a copy. We hope to arrange more of these so please let us know of topic of interest to you. Upcoming dates: 30/01/2019: CPR Forum 02/02/2019: ISSAK Sports day at KISU - please help out at the PTA Food stand for an hour if your child has a match! Please look out for photos of all our activities on our Facebook and Instagram pages. us on pta@kisu.com for any ideas and suggestions. PTA Executive Committee Judith Kyule-Raval, Jose Martin, Liesl Wingfield & LiyaTadese

3 Page 3 MUSIC DYNAMICS Individual Private Music Lessons KISU runs a Private Music Lessons program for all age-groups where students seeking to improve their musical ability have the option of taking individual private lessons for an additional fee. Approximately 10 professional musicians from around Kampala offer weekly instruction in voice, keyboard, wind, string, and percussion instruments. Students may study voice, piano, classical guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, modern drums, African drums, cornet, recorder, violin, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet and African xylophone. Registration is in progress now and forms can be obtained from the Secondary music room or Primary office. The cost per lesson is UGSHS 40,000 and a minimum of 10 lessons is required at registration each term. All payments must be in advance. ABRSM Examinations 2019 KISU is a centre for Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music Examinations that are taken annually. The British examiners come out here for about a week from England to assess our students on various instruments of their choice including voice, piano, recorder, guitar, flute, and clarinet. Examination Fees The practical examinations will take place in May/June The exact examination date will be communicated in due course. The registration deadline for the ABRSM practical examinations is 08 February The fees for the different grades are as follows: Grade Fees (USD) Fees (UGX) Prep Test ,000 Grade ,000 Grade ,000 Grade ,000 Grade ,500 Grade ,000 Grade ,000 Grade ,000 ARSM ,500 Dip/ABRSM ,000 Dr Benon Kigozi, Head of Music

4 Page 4 GADGET CORNER Samsung 8K TV In the case of 8K, this means a horizontal resolution of Just a few weeks ago I was explaining pixels to a friend who wanted to buy a TV but did not quite get what this whole business of 4K is all about. Now I have to call him and tell him to forget 4K because now we have 8K, yes that is 4 times the pixels you get with your 4K TV and to think that Samsung was not too wise to introduce 8K when there is hardly any content would be wrong and this is why. 8K content is coming sooner rather than later: Japan s NHK broadcaster is launching an 8K channel in December, while Netflix and TV France, among others, have already filmed some stuff in 8K. Here though is what is fascinating about Samsung s 85Q900R TV for today rather than tomorrow, surprisingly it doesn t actually need native 8K pictures to look incredible - it takes any content you feed it and spits out some of the best images we've yet to see on a screen this size. For starters, the upscaling engine does a brilliant job of separating source noise (such as compression artefacts and over-enthusiastic grain) from proper picture information. It then calculates the look of the 30 million plus extra pixels required cleverly enough to leave HD images looking sharper, more detailed, more dense and more three dimensional than they ever have before. Even on the best 4K TVs pixels and a vertical resolution of 4320 pixels, or 4320 resolution video. By comparison, 4K video has half the number of horizontal lines and half the number of vertical lines (3840 x 2160), for a resolution of Full HD is 1920 x 1080, or All this means 8K has four times as many pixels as 4K, and 16 times the number as Full HD. For all its astonishing, cutting-edge features, the 85Q900R isn t really much to look at in design terms: It's just a thin dark frame wrapped around an 85-inch screen with a pair of king-sized feet tucked under each bottom corner. The 85Q900R s design minimalism is enhanced by the way it puts all of its connections onto an external One Connect box that jacks into the TV via a single, surprisingly slender cable. The current Q900R One Connect carries four HDMI 2.0 ports, three USBs, Bluetooth, and support for wired and wireless networking. We say current One Connect for a reason, though, as Samsung is going to introduce a new One Connect box for the Q900R range in the new year that will carry an HDMI that s built to the brand new, barely ratified HDMI 2.1 standard. This is important because HDMI 2.1 can carry much more data than HDMI 2.0, and can support 8K at 60 frames a second and more, rather than only supporting 8K at 30 frames a second as the first batch of Q900Rs do. Despite boasting an all new processing system, the 85Q900R carries the same Eden 2.0 smart TV system found on all of Samsung s other mid-range and high-end TVs for That might sound bad, but actually isn't much a problem at all given that Eden 2.0 combines a huge wealth of apps with a straightforward, easily customized interface and impressive voice control/search functionality. Whether or not the world is ready for it, the Samsung Q900R is already out in the wild. In the US, it's available in an 85-inch variant called the Samsung QN85Q900RAFXZA and, soon in a new 98-inch variant. In the UK and other regions it's called the Samsung QE85Q900RATXXU and it's available in 65, 75 and 82- inch variants. Now you are 8K compliant. Allow me explain further. What I am talking about here is resolution. This means the number of horizontal and vertical pixels. Pixels equal information, so more pixels should mean a better quality image. That's the theory, at least. Robert Buga Head of IT

5 Page 5 Sports director Cross Country - Well done to the 72 Secondary students who competed in an Inter School Cross Country event in the botanical gardens, Entebbe. We are still waiting for the team results but there were some fantastic individual performances: Boys U20-2nd place - Yoweri U16-5th place - Lew U15-4th place Pierre U14-2nd place - Yosias U13-1st place - Tao 4th place - Jesse U12-1st place - Yonael Girls U20-1st place - Charis U16-1st place - Lisa 3rd place - Maluck 5th place - Siena U15-2nd place - Felistus U14-2nd place - Bernadette 3rd place - Christy 4th place - Alice U13-3rd place - Emma 4th place - Anita U12-1st place - Pauline 4th place - Claire Basketball - The season is well and truly underway with all teams having played a match. Results so far: U20B v RISU won v ISU lost U20G v RISU won v ISU won U16B v GEMS lost U16G v GEMS won U13B v GEMS lost U13G v GEMS lost James Whiston Sports Director and Head of PE

6 Page 6 PTA NEWS