Matt Sears

This note if from two individuals working on a school project in rural NC who I had the pleasure of meeting this spring.  They and their students are doing outstanding work:

Dear friends of Project H Design:

Around 7pm on Saturday April 16th, a tornado tore through Bertie County, striking the towns of Askewville, Colerain, and surrounding areas. It leveled houses and took the lives of 14 residents, injuring many more. While we at Project H were lucky, some of our Studio H students and their families lost their homes and property. The tornado is particularly devastating as it comes not long after last fall’s flood, which destroyed downtown Windsor and parts of the rest of the county.

As an organization, we do not consider ourselves to be in the business of post-disaster aid, but Bertie County is our home, and we are personally invested in the livelihood of our friends, colleagues, and students who live and work here. A few of our Studio H students, and students from the Bertie Early College High School in which we teach, were acutely affected by the tornado.

While we realize we can’t do as much as we would like, Project H does have an amazing group of global supporters like you, who have already emailed and called asking what you can do to help.

We would like to raise $5,000 in order to provide ten $500 “basic need” grants to families who have been most severely affected by the tornado.

Specifically, we personally know of three families with children at the Bertie Early College High School, who have lost their homes, and to whom we would like to provide this grant. Additional families will be selected based on severity of damage and immediate needs.

$500 will sponsor one family’s basic needs, supplies, clothing, food, in the upcoming weeks, though any amount will be greatly appreciated. Please help us support our students and neighbors in Bertie County. Thank you in advance for your generosity and empathy.

Sincerely,

Emily Pilloton and Matthew Miller
Project H Design / Studio H
www.projecthdesign.org
www.studio-h.org

 

Summary and thoughts on: Ellen Ullman. “BYOD and Security.” Tech and Learning. March 2011: 32-36.

New Canaan High School in Connecticut allows students to bring their own devices to school.  The school uses MAC addresses on students’ devices to register student devices on their wireless network (see https://sites.google.com/a/ncps-k12.org).

Alvarado (Texas) Independent School district is looking at a hotel-like approach: students open a browser and are taken to a login page.

Katy (Texas) ISD has partnered with Verizon to create a network (filtered, but open to Web 2.0 tools) to support mobile phones for all of it’s 5th graders.  The mobile devices work with the Wi-Fi at school and then only on Verizon’s network when away from school.  Verizon works with the school’s filter to provide security.  The district works with students on internet responsibility to ensure that Web 2.0 tools can be used to increase collaboration (and it’s all device neutral).

Concerns: What about how teachers deliver content?  Say you want to use Microsoft Excel, but not all machines have it.  Or Adobe Flash, which is not available on iPhone or iPad?  Web-based tools like Google Docs and Windows Live can compensate for some of these variations.

 

Hello there!  So I’m back to blogging.  I like to take in science articles on a regular basis, specifically ones that relate to the cosmos.  From time to time I plan on blogging links to my most recent reads in case we happen to have common tastes.  I’ll also be posting educational and political article compilations occasionally.

• Nabakov Butterfly Theory Vindicated. nytimes.com  1/25/11
• In New California Gold Rush, Old Mines Reopen. nytimes.com  2/11/11

 

Well, this is likely the end of Matt’s Meandering Sights.  This blog has been great to me and I’m going to keep in up as long as WordPress will let me.  So many great memories from my time in India!  My life has opened a new chapter, and I’ve opened a couple of new sites to track it.

Please follow my family, including the birth of my new little girl Marisol at:

http://beckmannsears.com

… and my professional life at: http://amathteacherindurham.com

Thank you, WordPress.com for hosting me!!!

 

The day finally came and went…  Our invention team made its formal presentation at EurkeaFest.  he scariest moment was during the Q&A (pictured above) when the Lemelson-MIT $100,000 prize-winner Dr. BP Agrawal asked our students if they had considered tapping biological systems (such as Sequoya Trees water transfer) to move water instead of using a pump to water the plants.  With all of us nervous, Vincent answered, “If you can dream it, it is possible.”  Roaring laughter and applause as that ended our presentation.  A couple of more days here, then back to Durham.

 

We spent the morning today with Fidelity Investments learning how new technologies are merging into today’s business environments.  Very cool experience!  Duck tour in the afternoon.

 

The students (our InvenTeam) spent the morning practicing their presentations.  Then we spent the day walking the Freedom Trail, learning about the history of Boston, and ended with dinner in the Fenway neighborhood.   We ate under the bleachers at Fenway Park with our Lemelson-MIT contact Ellen (above).  Resting tonight then back out in Boston tomorrow!

 

Stopped in NY City for a few hours.  Here’s our team at Grand Central Terminal.

 

We’re heading up to MIT to present our invention work from this year (http://hillsidentinventeam.wordpress.com).  Here we are leaving the Metro subway in Washington, DC.