Celebrate with Pi, Not Cake

The Chicago Tribune (3/14, Ford) reports that "Monday is Pi Day," in honor of "the number that expresses the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter" and "starts with 3.14159. Thus, March 14, or 3/14, for Pi Day." The celebration started in San Francisco in 1989 and "has spread around the world, and math teachers, students and other self-proclaimed math fans amused or intrigued by pi celebrate the number." The Tribune points out that "one highlight of many Pi Day events is a competitive recitation of the numerous digits of pi, which modern computers have calculated to a trillion decimal places." Chicago's Morgan Park Academy has a "record" of 312 digits, and one Walter Payton College Prep student who now attends Yale University "remembered a mind-blowing 500 digits."

 

Globaloria Game Demos

So this must be that "Back Button"
that the students were talking about.
I wonder what it tastes like?
I know they won't miss it, cause I heard them say
that they already had their "Next Button!"

The students are really working hard on their game demos. I'm really proud of them. They seem to be grasping the idea of Flash since we have been working on our Game Demos. We've gotten Drawing a Scene and Adding Scenes completed and uploaded. It took the students several tries to get their scenes working properly. They've learned to set up folders for each scene and to add the layers for each scene within that scene's folder. They've also learned to use the timeline and to set up each scene to go for 9 frames, such as GameIntro, TeamIntro, etc.  They learned that they needed a new layer for each object. They learned to make sure that they were on the layer that they thought they were on when they were adding something to their scene, such as making sure the text was on the text layer and not on the background layer. It took them one or two "do overs" to learn to do these things correctly. They've learned many things about frames and keyframes, such as how to insert frames, remove frames, insert keyframes, insert blank keyframes, clear keyframes, convert to keyframes, convert to blank keyframes. That was a long, hard process, but we all survived it and are better at Flash as a result of it. Whew!

Now,we are tackling buttons. Oh yeah, those awesome buttons that get you from one scene to the next scene or from one scene back to the previous scene. Thus far, the students have been able to get their next buttons to work properly. However, there seems to be a problem with their back buttons. The back buttons keep going to the next scene rather than to the previous scene, even though it appears the coding is correctly. The students even deleted the buttons, coding, etc. and started over on the back buttons, but the same thing happened. I spoke with my mentor, Bill, and he is going to look at the Flash file that one of the students uploaded to their team's wiki and let us know what is wrong. Hopefully, the students can get this corrected so the Adding Buttons Flash files can be uploaded. Next, we'll be working on Adding Animation. It's great how all the students are working on their game demos and helping each other when they run into problems. I go around and check on the different teams and offer any help that I can once they have tried to solve the flash problems and once other teams have tried to help them solve the flash issues.

Globaloria Presented to the West Virginia State Board of Education

Gaston and Idit Caperton shake hands with WVBOE Vice President Jenny Phillips

and President Pricilla Haden after presenting a Globaloria Progress Report. 

World Wide Workshop Newsletter, February, 2011:

 

On February 9th, Idit Caperton and former WV Governor Gaston Caperton were invited to make a special presentation to the West Virginia State Board of Education. Their talk focused on the readiness of Globaloria to be scaled to every middle school and high school across the state as an integrated component of the WVDE Global 21. As follow up, a Globaloria Stakeholders Committee is being convened by the newly appointed state superintendent, Dr. Jorea Marple, to present a roll-out plan to the Board in the fall of 2011. “We were thrilled with the opportunity to share a Globaloria progress report to the Board,” said Idit. “We discussed its role in preparing students for success in college and future careers, and its potential to transform teaching and learning in alignment with common core standards.” “West Virginia has been leading the nation in education innovation with computers, and we must commit to leap forward again and serve our students and teachers better,” said former Governor Caperton who is known for transforming education with technology in his state during 1989-1997.

 

The Final Torchbearer of “The War to End all Wars”

Frank Buckles' enlistment photo into the U.S. Army in 1917, left, 

and Buckles receives an American flag during Memorial Day activities 

at the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, May 26, 2008.  (AP)

Frank Woodruff Buckles was born February 1, 1901, in Bethany, Missouri. He lived and attended schools in Coffey and Walker, Missouri, and at the age of 15 moved with his family to Oklahoma, where he worked at a bank and attended high school in Oakwood, a small frontier town.

Frank Woodruff Buckles enlisted in the United States Army on August 14, 1917, at the age of sixteen, after being turned away by the United States Marines and United States Navy due to his age. He was assigned serial number 15577, and assigned to Fort Logan, Colorado. He earned the rank of Corporal, and drove ambulances and motorcycles for the Army’s First Fort Riley Casual Detachment. He traveled across England and France and witnessed the European Theatre of World War I.

Following the signing of the Armistice in 1918, ending World War I, Corporal Buckles was assigned to a prisoner-of-war escort company to return prisoners to Germany. Corporal Buckles was discharged from the United States Army in 1920.

While working as a civilian for the American President Lines, a shipping company in Manila, Philippines, Corporal Buckles was captured by the Japanese on December 8, 1942, the day following the attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor. Corporal Buckles spent three and a half years as a prisoner of war in Japanese prison camps at Santo Tomas and Los Baños, and was rescued by the 11th Airborne Division on February 23, 1945. Corporal Buckles returned to the United States, married Audrey Mayo of Pleasanton, California, in 1946, and settled in the San Francisco, California area.

 Frank Woodruff Buckles retired from work in the shipping industry and in January, 1954, moved with his family to raise cattle on the 330 acre Gap View Farm near Charles Town, West Virginia, the area where his forefather, Robert Buckles, settled in 1732.

 With the death of 108-year-old Richard Landis on February 4, 2008, Frank Woodruff Buckles became the last surviving American World War I veteran. Corporal Buckles, as the lone survivor of the Great War, continued to serve America and dedicated his final years to ensuring that the sacrifices of his fellow “Doughboys” were properly commemorated by continuing relentlessly advocating for the refurbishing of the District of Columbia War Memorial and its establishment as the National World War I Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and in his home state of Missouri, and as the Honorary Chairman of the World War I Memorial Foundation.

 Corporal Buckles was honored by presidents and high-ranking officials at the White House, on Capitol Hill, and at the Pentagon, and in 2008 was awarded the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ Gold Medal of Merit and also the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry’s Knight Commander of the Court of Honor by the Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Southern Jurisdiction, U.S.A. For his service during World War I, the United States government awarded Corporal Buckles the World War I Victory Medal and the Army of Occupation of Germany Medal and qualified him for four Overseas Service Bars, and he was awarded the Legion of Honor by French president Jacques Chirac.

 The last surviving American World War I veteran, Frank Woodruff Buckles, died at the age of 110 on February 27, 2011, at his home in Charles Town, West Virginia.

At the death of Frank Woodruff Buckles, a grateful nation rose up to give honor to the last survivor of a war in which five million Americans served and to a man who stood as a representative of his former comrades-in-arms and their sacrifices; and 

 Even as our nation mourns his passing, we also celebrate the remarkable life of Frank Woodruff Buckles, a true patriot and the final torchbearer of “the War to End all Wars.”

Bottle Rocket Challenge

All middle schools and high schools in West Virginia are invited to participate in the Bottle Rocket Challenge to take place in Clarksburg, WV on May 26, 2011.  The event is being sponsored by The Prodigy Foundation, Freedom Bank, RESA 7, the MAAC (Mid-Atlantic Aerospace Complex), and Fairmont State GEAR UP and it is after the WESTEST 2.  Each school that wants to take part must select one team consisting of no more than five 6^th, 7^th, 8^th, 9^th, 10^th, 11^th, and/or 12^th grade students and one teacher.  The school may conduct their rocket launch whenever it may be convenient to select participating team. 

The winning team from each school is invited to participate on May 26, 2011 in the Prodigy Foundation Bottle Rocket Challenge at Hite Field in Clarksburg, WV at 10:00 am.  If a school cannot reach Hite Field by 10:00 am, it will not matter.  The first team there will begin the launch and we will assign numbers to the teams as they arrive.  Each team will be provided with a launcher and water to propel the rockets. Also, lunch will be provided. Each student will also be given a tee shirt and the Rocket Boys book for participating, and will have an opportunity to have the book autographed by 4 of the original “Rocket Boys”.

The top three teams will be given individual prizes along with cash prizes totaling $1000 from Freedom Bank for their teacher to use to improve their classroom.  This event will be in conjunction with the WV Teacher Achievement Award from the Prodigy Foundation which will be given to a WV teacher in honor of the Rocket Boys mentor and teacher, Freida J. Riley.

In addition to  the launch the students will be judged on a presentation (5 minutes maximum) summarizing their design, scientific/engineering principles utilized, trial test flights, design insufficiencies (if there were any), and how they were overcome.  Students will be required to give this presentation after their test launch, and each team member must participate in giving the presentation. A separate prize will be given to the team with the best presentation.

Facebook Profiles Are Now Part of 80% of College's Admissions Outreach

Recruiters aren’t the only ones looking at candidates’ Facebook profiles. Four out of every five college admissions offices use the social network to recruit students.

That statistic comes from Kaplan Test Prep’s 2010 survey of college admissions officers. And like the company’s Senior Communication Manager Russell Schaffer clarified in an email, “we found that 82 percent of admissions officers reported that their school is using Facebook to recruit students.”

That doesn’t mean that the content of a Facebook profile factors into decisions on whether to admit students, but we suspect that the more competitive institutions might pay more attention to applicants’ social media presences. Other schools might simply look online to find students and encourage them to apply. A Quora thread this week backs up that theory, especially a post therein by Allison Oster:

As an interviewer for Harvard College, I do occasionally Google students I’m interviewing. So that will turn up FB profiles or anything else that is public. As far as I know, we are not given specific instructions to exclude it.
I think it’s always better to be safe than sorry — when you apply to college you spend such a long time crafting an image through your applications and essays that to be careless about your online data is just silly.
That doesn’t mean you can’t have a FB profile — just make it private if you’re going to use it for inside jokes and silly photos. If you happen to write about your volunteer activities and the online business you started, it’s fine to leave it up.
Does a FB profile or a website prejudice me before I meet a candidate?
Yes. Absolutely.
I try not to let it. But all people are influenced by details and nuances. That’s why first impressions are still valuable. That’s why it’s important to remember to write thank you notes, to dress up for your interview, and to say please and thank you.
If you care about your college career, one of the best things you can do is google yourself, then pull anything off that you wouldn’t voluntarily show your parents’ friends.

We’ve seen and heard many stories about adults not getting jobs because of their Facebook profiles, so the mere idea that 17-year-olds’ activity on the social network could influence their college admissions may seem pretty harsh.

Then again, put yourself in the shoes of the typical college admissions officer, whose decisionmaking responsibilities get more difficult every year. Competition has crescendoed to peak levels, thanks to 30 years of College Board statistics continuing to show that college educations enable people to earn more money professionally.

A Facebook profile obviously doesn’t hold as much weight as grades, test scores, extracurricular activities, teacher recommendations and essays. But when you’re looking at a tie between equally talented students, social media content could be the tiebreaker.

That makes it critical for the most competitive students to heed the brilliant advice from StudentAdvisor: Follow the social media feeds of any school one plans to apply to; use blogging tools on Facebook and elsewhere to show off good writing skills; make good use of the privacy settings to limit what college admissions officers might see; and for extra credit, consider uploading a video talking about why you want a particular institution to admit you.

Readers, what do you think about the revelation that colleges look at Facebook profiles of prospective students?

Disney Acquires Social Network for Kids

Online Neighborhoods for Kids and Their Grownups

On 2/23/11, Leena Rao from Tech Crunch wrote:

 Disney has just acquired Togetherville, a social network for kids 10 years of age or younger.

Togetherville, which exited beta last year, mimics the experience of adult social networking sites, i.e. Facebook, but in an age-appropriate and parent-monitored environment. Togetherville promises a safer, more secure environment, where parents can moderate who their children are connecting with. Parents approve each of their child’s friends, and can also connect with other parents using Facebook's social graph.

Parents can easily interact with their kids in Togetherville, while kids have their very own social community and login to engage with friends, play games, watch videos, and create art. Children create “neighborhoods” from Facebook friends, and can connect through School Communities, which allows parents and kids to connect with school friends without requiring the parents to be connected via Facebook.