Looking For CAS Ideas?

There are 5 new links on the ideas page. Look for the “New” to spot them quickly. Hopefully you’ll find something useful to share.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 20,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Changes

Hi. I’ve made a couple of changes to this blog and just wanted to make you aware of them.

I changed the name of the menu previously called Links to ideas.

I changed the name of the menu previously called Activities to cas @ rhs (rhs is the school I’m at)

I deleted a couple items from the Resources menu because they were already on the ideas page.

I added the following links to the Resources menu:

• IB Blogs
• IB Learner Profile
• IBtv
• University of California IB Credits

I also changed the theme of the blog and it will snow until January 4th complements of WordPress. Pretty cool.

I hope you find something useful here. Feedback and comments are always appreciated. Thanx

Do Students Still Need to Complete 150 CAS Hours?

No and yes.

IBO wants your students to come close to earning 150 hours but they don’t want students to focus on earning hours but rather on completing the 8 Learning Outcomes.

This is from page 6 of the New CAS Curriculum that went into effect in 2010:

“This focus on learning outcomes emphasizes that it is the quality of a CAS activity (its contribution to the student’s development) that is of most importance. The guideline for the minimum amount of CAS activity is approximately the equivalent of half a day per school week (three to four hours per week), or approximately 150 hours in total, with a reasonable balance between creativity, action and service. “Hour counting”, however, is not encouraged.”

The way I understand this is that IBO still wants students to earn about 150 hours with an equal balance of hours spread between the categories of Creativity, Action, and Service, but they do not want hour counting to be the goal. This means CAS Coordinators have a lot of leeway when it comes to the number of hours students complete.

The main focus for students (and therefore CAS Coordinators) is completing significant, meaningful activities that will allow students to meet the 8 Learning Outcomes.

Documents Removed

The following documents were removed from the Documents page at the request of the IBO. These documents are available at the OCC (Online Curriculum Centre). To access the OCC you’ll need a username and password which you can obtain from your IB Coordinator.

Handbook of Procedures 2011

IB Learner Profile

CAS Guide

CAS/PQ

8 Learning Outcomes

Model Form A: CAS Progress Form

Model Form B: CAS Individual Student Completion Form

5-Year Review

Just in case it might help an IB Coordinator out there I added our school’s Self-Study and Questionnaire to the Documents page. Hope it helps.

IBIS – International Baccalaureate Information System

The Programme Completion Form (PCF) has been replaced with IBIS – International Baccalaureate Information System found at ibis.ibo.org.

Not only can you submit your students’ CAS status but you have an additional month to submit it (June 1st in my case).

You’ll need to get your login information to IBIS from your IB Coordinator.

Updates

Documents: New and updated documents

Links: New activity listed- Malaria No More

Activities: updated- some broken links were removed

Schools: updated- some broken links were removed

ManageBac: updated- removed student comments and added what I like about ManageBac

Contact: updated- removed my email address because you can message me right here on this blog if  you want, and I’ll stop getting spam robots filling my inbox with junk every day

Any feedback you have is appreciated.

Where Good Ideas Come From

Learning Outcome #7: Considered the ethical implications of their actions

The CAS curriculum states: Ethical decisions arise in almost any CAS activity (for example, on the sports field, in musical composition, in relationships with others involved in service activities). Evidence of thinking about ethical issues can be shown in various ways, including journal entries and conversations with CAS advisers.

A very helpful guideline can be downloaded here thanks to Molly Peterson, Fairhope, Alabama USA: CAS Learning Outcome #7: consider the ethical implications