Sign Language progress.

I have been attending Sign Language classes every Tuesday since last year. I believe we've progressed a great deal from last year. For example, things such as numbers and alphabets which were initially pretty confusing when we first learnt them have now become pretty common and easy to use at disposal due to the number of times we've been using them.

Over the past few months we've been learning a wide range of vocabulary and we often have short conversations amongst each other just to put what we've learnt in practical use. And so this improves our collaboration skills as we frequently communicate with each other using sign language.

Something new that we've been doing for the past 3 weeks is having a small quiz at the end of the lesson with the things we've learnt in that lesson along a few other stuff that we had learnt in previous lessons. This turned out to be pretty useful since it acts like a refresher for the previous vocabulary we learnt.

Below are a few pictures that were taken during the activity, courtesy of Miss Fert.

Table Tennis

In the past semester, I had been attending the Table Tennis after school activity. As someone who didn't have much prior experience in this sport, I reckon i've improved quite a bit and have become quite confident when playing a game compared to when I first started.

I was able to work collaboratively with various members who were present during the secession which allowed me to develop new skills in terms of the serves I make, etc.

Overall, I'd say that this activity helped benefit me since it allowed me to undertake a new challenge and I am now much more comfortable with playing this sport now that I have had prior experience.

(Pictures taken by Laurens). 

The Recycling Experience

Over the past few weeks, our Recycling group has been pretty active. We've been been working on quite a few things during our sessions ranging from creating Recycling boxes, to visiting the Recycling center to hand over the items. One of our primary goals had been to restock the teachers with new recycling boxes since a few of the teachers required new, or bigger recycling boxes. And so if there was any spare time remaining after our Recycling session, we headed over to Mr. Lockwood's room and started work on decorating the boxes. This was a rather engaging activity since it allowed us to collaborate amongst one another and also get to know the other members better as we were all gathered at the same spot. Plus there was also the creativity aspect to it in terms of the ways we decorated the boxes.

A rather memorable experience that comes to mind was one that took place 2 weeks ago. The day started off as usual; we were able to collect the materials to recycle and loaded it all into the truck but the sole difference being that I was to go alone to the Recycling center this week, which was a first for me since I'm normally accompanied by Yoon Jae, the co-leader. While being the only person there to unload the materials wasn't a very constraining ordeal since I had the help of Mr. Ranjish to unload the boxes, it was pretty refreshing to have that added sense of responsibility while there and to be able to be in-charge of the way things went. And so while it wasn't that big of a deal, the experience was pretty new and enjoyable.

Below are a few pictures taken during the session:

The Recycling room in the school with the containers we put the waste in. 

The materials loaded onto the truck. The Recycling containers were in the back of the truck. During that day, we had an influx of cardboard.

The Recycling center close to the school where we unload the materials.

The weighing machine used in the Recycling center.

After being weighed, the cardboard is normally put outside while paper is put inside.

Quarterly CAS Goals

During this quarter, I hope to do the following things:

I'll be joining Fun Basketball for the coming few months and I hope to undertake new challenges since I don't play basketball very frequently. It would also allow me to work collaboratively with the other members who would be playing in the team and allow me to develop new skills. 

I shall be continuing Sign Language and so I hope to broaden the level in which I can communicate through that medium. I shall be able to work collaboratively with the other students and also develop new skills in terms of the new vocabulary that I learn.

I'll still be continuing my leadership role in Recycling this semester as well. I will be working on taking more pictures which I hope to post on this blog. 

Sign Language

I have continued to attend sign language classes which I had started in year 11. Going to these classes every Tuesday has been an enjoyable experience for me personally since I'm able to learn a completely new language.

Throughout this course, I'm able to develop new skills since I learn how to say new things every day. For example, during the last few weeks we learnt how to say colors, alphabets and general greeting through sign language. Doing so also allowed us to work collaboratively amongst one another since we normally have periods where we have to come up and answer questions through sign language with each other regarding the new things that we learnt.

A picture taken when one person had to say his name through alphabets while the other person writes it down.

This has been a really interesting after-school activity and I'm hoping to learn a lot more as this activity progresses. 

Recycling 2014

Recycling over the past few weeks has been running smoothly, with everyone getting familiar with working alongside each other and the new members starting to get the hang of the way things work.

This semester, the majority of the members in our group were new to this service and so with our debriefing secession on the first service block, we were given a chance to properly explain how things work.

For this year of Recycling, I was also able to hold a Student Leader position providing me with more responsibilities while running this service. One instance that comes to mind is the day when I had to run the group myself. Being given instructions on what to do that day, I believe I was able to plan and initiate activities with the other members in the group since that was the first day when we begun the process of collecting waste to be recycled.

As I was the only student leader on that day, I also got to know many of the new members and work collaboratively alongside them. I would count that day as a very important one since I was able to get a taste of what its like to lead.

One of the issues our group is currently focusing on is to provide Recycling boxes for all of the classrooms since there have been a few reports of a few classrooms not having them. And so we've been able to find boxes which could be used as a Recycling box and so every week normally at the beginning or towards the end, we spend time decorating those boxes before sending them off for Recycling.

We were also able to make our first trip of this semester to the Recycling center where we normally give all our waste and in exchange we receive a little money.

Overall, its been going great so far. Having a smaller group makes doing the work much more efficient and to some degree, faster.

Below are a few pictures taken while Recycling:

All the boxes and cardboard stacked neatly ready to be sent of to the Recycling Center.

The Recycling center.

The Recycling Room in the school all cleaned up.

Goals for DP Year 2

Being the final year of the Diploma program, I hope to fulfill the following goals:

 I hope to achieve this year is to participate in badminton training activities and further improve my badminton skills. Through this, I would be able to work collaboratively with others while also being able to increase my awareness about my strengths. However, since Badminton isn't available until October I will be taking part in Table tennis which would allow me to develop new skills since I'm not a frequent player of that sport. 

For creativity, I hope to attend the sign language after school activity. This will allow me to develop new skills and work collaboratively with other members who are involved in that group. In a sense it also allows me to engage with activities of global importance since it allows me to develop sign language skills which I'd be able to put into use with those who are deaf. Although this may not be applicable throughout the word due to there being various sign languages, it would allow me to communicate with individuals from Sri Lanka.

I will be continuing with the service of Recycling which allows me to work collaboratively with the other members in the Recycling group and plan and initiate activities in terms of assigning specific tasks for each members. Recycling also allows me to engage with activities of global importance which in this case would be an issue that could be dealt with locally since it allows me to deal with matters of environmental importance since it allows us to take charge of how the waste in our school is being used while trying to encourage Recycling to its maximum. 

Semester end reflection

This semester has gone by pretty quickly and so the end of CAS approaches.

I would call this one of my most productive semester in terms of the activities I have performed in within CAS compared to my prior activities in previous semesters. 

In the beginning of the semester, I undertook a new challenge by trying out for SAISA Badminton. SAISA Badminton was pretty different than what I had previously done while in Fun Badminton last semester. I was attending 3 sessions throughout the week and even though I was not able to make it to the team of 4, I believe that my skill greatly improved over this course allowing my interest in this sport to further increase. Playing this sport also allowed me to increase my awareness and areas for growth because by planning with members in a team or by playing a single game, I got an idea of certain things that I could work on which could improve my playing skill and just in case you miss out on discovering an area you could grow in, there are always the other people you are playing with who would be glad to help you out and point you towards the right direction. 

This was my second semester in Recycling and the time spent during this Service was time well spent. I worked collaboratively with the other members in the Service allowing me to get to know them and also know people who are outside of my grade. In the beginning of every session, we planned and initiated activities in terms of who would go to which rooms to collect what, who would go to the recycling center, etc. This further built our overall organization strength since we were able to get things done more efficiently while working collaboratively with each other. 

Taking part in Recycling also got me engaged with issues of global importance since although we are not taking part in Recycling in a macro level, what we do every Thursday still makes a significant amount of change within the school and also in turn helps benefit the environment, even though in a micro scale, in Sri Lanka. 

Taking part in the Sign Language after school activity allowed me to develop new skills since I learnt the basics of Sign Language which turned out to be very interesting. We were able to work collaboratively in terms that the main teacher of the Sign Language activity was able to work with us directly and point us in the right direction when learning this new language. 

And I undertook a new challenge by creating the Photo Essay for Recycling. This was the first time I was using Lightroom and so I was able to develop new skills in terms of my ability to use this program. And so by taking this task, I was able to know more about creating Photo Essays and also how to operate a new program, which in this case was Lightroom. 

In terms of achieving the goals I set for this semester, I believe I was able to achieve all the goals I set since I took part in Badminton, continued attending Recycling for Service, and for Creativity, I was able to complete my Photo Essay, go for the drawing trip and additionally I was also able to attend Sign Language. 

This turned out to be a rather productive semester.  

Gecko Inc. Pictures

To download, click on the gear icon when moving your mouse on the picture and 'Download full resolution'.

I took this picture for the service group, Gecko Inc. where they were playing with the children from other schools. 

Creativity: Photo Essay

The Photo Essay which I was creating has been completed. It can be viewed by clicking on the link on the right side of the blog saying 'Photo Essay'.

As planned, I had used Adobe Lightroom to edit the photos which I had taken since I found it easier to produce effects on that than on Photoshop.

Above is a screenshot I had taken while editing the Photoshops in Lightroom.

Through this project I was able to undertake a new challenge since this was the first time that I was creating a Photo Essay and although I previously had Adobe Lightroom, this was also the first time that I had used this program in a context of editing photos. This allowed me to develop new skills in terms of my ability to edit photographs in Lightroom.

Overall I found this to be a good learning experience for me since it allowed me to experiment with programs which I was previously unfamiliar with. I will also be updating the Photo Essay with different editing styles of the photographs. After talking with Mr. Lockwood about my Photo Essay he advised me to try out different and more consistent styles. With that in mind, with the same photographs used, I'll be using a particular style for each of them such as all of the pictures being in black and white.
Doing this will further allowed me to build my knowledge in terms of the best or most appealing ways of designing Photo Essays. 

Creativity: Sign Language

Another aspect of Creativity which I will be taking part is Sign Language. I was able to sign up for it last week and i'm able to learn Sign Language there. The main 'teacher' of sign language who is present is a deaf individual who helps us out when we don't know a word, along with Miss Fert, who is the other supervisor.

The first thing I got to learn when I went to this activity was the alphabets and then learning to say certain sentences.
So far, through sign language i'm able to convey the following sentences;
My name is Nishant. I am 16 years old. I am Indian. I study in the Overseas School. I have 1 brother and no sisters. I live in Colombo.

Although it took a while to get a hang of it, learning to say them was a great experience allowing me to develop new skills. 

I'm hoping to learn more phrases in Sign Language and also to master the alphabets. 

Creativity: Photo Essay

For Creativity, I will be working on creating a Photo Essay. The topic for my photo essay would be Recycling and at the moment, the photos that I'm planning to include are the ones from the beginning on the Service reaching up until the end to show the progress of the day.

Since this was the first time that I would be creating a Photo Essay, I had to do some initial research in order to investigate some examples which I could base my Photo Essay on. An example that I found was one which Mr. Lockwood mentioned, which was 'Magnum Photos'. Upon viewing some of their example Photo essays, I've gotten a good idea on how I'm going to base mine on.

An example of one of the Essays that I found on their website was http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/theater-war

This essay had pictures which were normally in black and white. I believe that I can convert the pictures that I took during recycling and modify them in Photoshop in order to create that effect.

For example, this is a photo that I modified using the Black and White effects in Photoshop, settings which I used for this photo are displayed below:

Changing each setting would give the black and white a different shade, so I decided to play around with it a bit until I got the right fit.

Another thing that I'll have to investigate is the size of each photo since for the Photo Essay, they'll have to be of the same size. And i'll also have to decide where i'm going to be posting this essay, I may have to add a widget on the blog to display it or I could implement it into a post.

Another option that I could use is Photoshop Lightroom which is a photo editing software, below is a picture:

I think that Lightroom is a program main function revolves around what i'm planning to do. I was able to immediately change the picture into the Black/White mode and further edit it by clicking on 'Develop'.

I feel like the design of the interface is much more flexible since i'm able to import all the pictures which I am going to use at once and access them at once easily. 

Action: Badminton

For the action aspect of CAS, I was attending the SAISA Badminton training. I believe that i've come a long way from when I first started playing Fun Badminton during the first semester.

For example, my smashing and lobbing skills have greatly improved than what it was when I first started and I'm able to smash the majority of the shots that have an opportunity to be smashed.

Overall, I believe that I have benefited greatly from this experience since I was able to undertake new challenges by playing against various levels of players participating in SAISA and also develop new skills by learning different techniques such as performing a successful drop shot, etc. 

Creativity: Recycling pictures & Week Without Walls

For the creativity aspect of Recycling, my role has been to document the activities taken place during service by taking pictures, I'm hoping to then edit those pictures using a program called Photoshop Lightroom 5 and I would be undertaking new challenges since I don't really use Lightroom often and hence I would be using YouTube tutorials to broaden my knowledge on that program.

Group photo, 24th February 2014

Group photo, 23rd January 2014

Taking the waste to the Recycling center, 9th January 2014

Reflecting in the lab, 23rd January 2014

Moving on to a more substantial Creativity aspect, there was a lot of Creativity work that I got done during the week without walls trip which involved sketching, using charcoal to map out scenery, etc. which allowed me to undertake new challenges and increase my awareness about my strengths and areas of growth.

A few examples of them are below: (being updated):

Day 3, 29th January 2014

Today turned out to be quite an interesting day to spend, considering the activities that were done. The day started off by visiting another site which was 40km away which took us about an hour to get to. Upon getting there, we picked a spot to sketch or paint for an hour. I decided to use charcoal for my sketch which turned out to be not so bad as I expected it to be and I was able to develop new skills in terms of using charcoal since that's not a medium I uses often.

We then received a surprise by meeting the Dry Zone group in the same site in which we were. It was pretty refreshing to see my old classmates after that stretch of days. After saying our goodbyes, we headed. 

Week Without Walls: Day 1 & 2

In these past few days of week without walls, it's fair to say that we've done quite a lot of things which include biking, drawing and visiting monuments.

On the first day after reaching the Hotel, we cycled around the lake which was a refreshing view aided with the cool breeze. We then visited a nearby 'park' which had some historical places and we spent about an hour there. It was a good opportunity to hang out with the other members in trip and to see the structures built there which included a massive statue of a Buddha.

The following events after that included going back to the hotel, talking with everyone else, having dinner along with a chilled bottle of coke and retiring off to bed.

The second day (which incidentally is the day I am writing the post) involved quite a lot of activities which we participated in.

We started off by riding to a site which had many historical monuments. We spent 2 hours there sketching an area of our choice where we were able to develop or build on skills, in my case, I chose a huge structure which looked like a broken down fall and luckily right behind me were 4 little puppies.

After the sketching was done, we were supposed to have lunch there, however due to the heavy rain, we had to have in in the bus which was actually pretty nice since we had Hasith's music to set the mood.

When the rain dimmed down, we visited many more historical places which was very interesting since we even managed to come across this huge monument which had the whole layout of the building carved on the walls of it.

Many more monuments as interesting as those such as a humongous statue of a Buddha.

All in all, this day was eventful for me, since I was able to build on my Creativity by being able to draw and also met some Action requirements due to the fact that we cycled all the way to the site.

(All pictures were taken by me.) 

Goals for Week Without Walls

The Week Without Walls trip that I will be attending is the Art on Two Wheels one which is in Polonnaruwa which involves creativity and bicycling.

The main goals which I am hoping to achieve during this trip involve an area of Creativity. For example, i'm hoping to help build my pencil drawing skills by making sketches of the places which we would be visiting. I'm also hoping to occasionally incorporate watercolor in my art in the style familiar to Quentin Blake and increase my strength and awareness for areas of growth.

Since this is also going to be a trip which students from our grade and the 10th grade would be attending, I will also be to work collaboratively with them.

Goals for Semester 2

My goal for action is to improve my Badminton skills and maybe try to make it into the team. I'll also be visiting the Gym every Saturday and gradually increase the amount of work done

For Creativity, I will be attending the Drawing Week without walls trip where I will be involved in creating multiple sketches and use different media. Since I also take pictures during Recycling, I'm hoping to edit them appropriately using a program I have called 'Photoshop Lightroom'.

Goals for service include attending Recycling for the second semester where I'll be involved in recycling paper and cardboard in the school. 

Recycling 2014

Today was our first Recycling secession which we had for the beginning of the semester and the second semester of recycling for me, personally. We had a whole bunch of new kids present today except for our 2 returning members, David and Varun. It was quite a good experience getting to know and collaborating with the new members whom I will be spending next semester with.

We had an introductory lesson at the beginning of Recycling for the new members and then we all moved on to what we do best: Recycle.
Below is a picture of our new Recycling members (a few may be missing due to them not being present that day).

After being put into groups and collecting all the materials that needed recycling, I was able to go to the Recycling center in order to give those items where it would then get properly recycled and in exchange for those materials, we would receive cash. 

The materials that were going to be given for recycling. 

The cash received from giving those materials.

All in all, it was a good secession and it would be pretty interesting to see how this secession goes in terms of recycling and working with the new members.