Grade 8 computer science students have been discussing global issues online with students at the World Foreign Language Middle School (WFLMS) in Shanghai. They have explored topics including the effects of human consumption on local environments, the influence of the media on society, and issues surrounding youth and technology. Those discussions have yielded viewpoints on how digital photo alterations can negatively affect one’s self-image and social problems caused by the media.
“With this technology, we are able to discuss real-world topics from the perspectives of two different countries – realizing that some are the same, and some are different, giving us the ability to empathize with different perspectives from around the world,” said Devanshi Mehta, grade 8.
Classmate Allison Cartee also enjoyed the variety of perspectives offered by the forum. “[The WFLMS students] offer interesting perspectives on ideas that Americans do not consider,” she said. “Sometimes, they bring up topics that we have never heard of, and I enjoy learning about their lifestyles through their posts.”
This article first appeared on the Web log for the American Association of School Librarians. It is reprinted here by the kind permission of the author, Diane Main, director of learning, innovation and design at Harker.
When I work on family history research, whether it’s for my own tree or a friend’s, I often find I lose track of time, get totally “in the zone,” and sometimes even forget to eat and sleep enough. That combination of little successes and new challenges that pushes me to the edge of my abilities is something that is referred to as “flow.” If you spend a lot of time with kids, you will have seen it when they are playing video games and can’t seem to put them down. For others, it’s reading books or engaging in some hands-on hobby. Flow is the apex of engagement and motivation.
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi pioneered the research into this phenomenon. He was looking into happiness, creativity and motivation, and developed what we now refer to as flow. Flow is doing what you love and what you’re good at, but still being challenged by the activity. We see this in education as well, but sadly we perhaps don’t see it often enough. It is generally thought that the integration of technology into learning environments tends to instantly increase learner motivation and engagement. While this may be true for a short time, unless the use of technology tools builds skills while also presenting appropriate challenges, it loses its motivational value.
As seen in this image from Wikipedia, flow exists at the intersection of high skill level and high challenge level. The emotions that exist in the other regions of the chart are not really what we’re aiming for in learning situations. This can be where games can swoop in to the rescue, as long as their introduction is meaningful and their use well thought-out. Sometimes, it’s great to just have gaming breaks, using games of all kinds, to “reset” the brain and ignite motivation. A quick round of charades or five minutes with Zombie Drop can be a great way to get kids to transition from one activity in class to another.
But there are some games that are becoming the platform for the learning itself, and that are being used for entire class periods over days or even weeks. One such example is MinecraftEDU. Most parents and educators have at least heard of Minecraft. The educational version MinecraftEDU is only available to schools, and it is quickly becoming THE destination for teachers and students who want to maximize learner creativity and engagement in subjects from history and literature to math and science. I teach a computer science course that functions as a survey of the field of computer science without focusing exclusively on programming. We use MinecraftEDU to explore concepts in computer science (such as subroutines, abstraction, conditional statements, loops and algorithms), to engage in the design thinking process by building homes for one another, and to explore introductory level programming with in-game robots called turtles. Instead of learning about our content, my students get the chance to be immersed in a virtual world they can manipulate and learn from.
An unexpected benefit, the first few times I used MinecraftEDU with my high school students, was the community building that seemed to occur instantly when we began to use the game in class. Students who had formerly kept to themselves and not spoken much in class suddenly appeared comfortable with me and the rest of their peers when they started interacting within the game environment. And since most of them had never played Minecraft before, they had a lot to learn, which they did by figuring things out and then teaching each other. Before long, my hesitant high schoolers were losing hours in the game world, building and communicating in ways none of us thought possible. I had stumbled upon a way to bring them to a place of flow. And now I’m hooked too.
By Zach Jones, with additional information provided by debate teachers Carol Green, Jenny Alme and Karina Momary
Students Earn Accolades and TOC Spots at Presentation High
More than 30 Harker students attended the Presentation High School Public Forum Invitational held the weekend of Nov. 8. Eighteen upper school students competed in the varsity division while four upper school and eight middle school students competed in the novice division; three seniors came to the tournament to coach novices.
Two of Harker’s varsity teams made it into the Elite Eight, with one team debating its way to the final two, losing the final round on a 2-1 decision. Seniors Nikhil Kishore and Vamsi Gadiraju rocked their first tournament of the season as final-round participants and earned their first leg to the Tournament of Champions.
Kishore and Gadiraju are the fifth Harker public forum team to earn half of their qualifying legs only two months into the season.
The top eight teams in elimination rounds included the duo known as “The Brothers Lin” – David Lin, grade 12, and his younger brother Jimmy Lin, grade 9.
Sorjo Banerjee, grade 11, was named as the top overall individual speaker at the tournament with five other Harker students being recognized in the top 15 overall.
Success in Minneapolis
Six middle school and 10 upper school students traveled to Apple Valley, Minn., in early November to compete at the MinneApple Debate Tournament. This is the first year Harker middle school students have competed at this high school varsity national invitational and everyone had a wonderful time!
Every team from Harker won at least one of their preliminary rounds, an especially notable accomplishment for the middle schoolers as they were the only grade 7 debaters in the pool of mostly high school juniors and seniors.
Junior Eesha Chona and Joyce Huang, grade 10, were 33rd seed and missed elimination rounds by the speaker point tie-breaker. Juniors Suraj Jagadeesh and Nikhil Bopardikar went undefeated in preliminaries and lost a close match in the first elimination round. Bopardikar was also named seventh overall individual speaker out of more than 200 speakers in the varsity division!
Abhinav Ketineni and Jasmine Liu, both grade 11, also went undefeated in prelims. They lost in the Sweet 16 as did the team of Alexander Lam, grade 10, and David Jin, grade 11. Both teams earned their first of two qualifying legs to the Tournament of Champions. Ketineni was also the ninth overall individual speaker.
Sorjo Banerjee and sophomore Emaad Raghib represented Harker all the way to the Elite Eight, losing in the quarterfinal round. They also picked up their first leg to the Tournament of Champions.
Middle School Holds Intramural Speech and Debate Tournament
On Oct. 30, 85 middle school students and their parents participated in the October Intramural Speech and Debate Tournament. Each student competed in three competitive rounds against other Harker students to practice and get a feel for what a competitive round is like. Parents and high school students volunteered as judges. The event was run in a timely fashion, with more than 50 total speech and debate rounds taking place on a Thursday evening.
In mid-November, the middle school’s Wildlife SOS club sold handmade greeting cards for $1 each to raise money for Wildlife SOS, an organization that works to protect wildlife in India.
In addition to cards, the group sold a few handmade key chains for 50 cents and $1 each. Although the club did not supply envelopes for the cards, it plans to make them available in the future if there is enough interest.
Wildlife SOS (http://www.wildlifesos.org/) was established in 1995 by a small group of people inspired to start a movement and make lasting change to protect and conserve India’s natural heritage, forests and wildlife wealth.
The Eaglebots, a VEX Robotics team comprising Harker students, is off to a strong start with this year’s VEX Skyrise challenge. The team – Andrew Chang, Christopher Gong, Rithvik Panchapakesan and Kaushik Shivakumar, all grade 8 –competed in the Dougherty Valley High School VEX Robotics Tournament on Oct. 25 and the South Bay VRC Middle School Tournament on Nov. 8. The Eaglebots made it to the finals in both competitions, finishing second. There were 70-plus teams between the two tournaments. At the South Bay VRC Middle School Tournament, the Eaglebots received the Robot Programming Skills Award and the Excellence Award, qualifying the team for several upcoming VEX Robotics State Championships tournaments in early 2015.
The Excellence Award is the highest award presented in the VEX Robotics Competition. The recipient is a team that exemplifies overall excellence in building a well-rounded VEX robotics program. This team excels in many areas and is a shining example of dedication, devotion, hard work and teamwork. As a strong contender in numerous award categories, this team deserves to be recognized for building a quality robot and a team committed to quality in everything that they do.
Halloween took on new meaning this year for grade 8 students in Cyrus Merrill’s history class, who donated care packages filled with thank you letters and candy to American troops stationed around the world, including in Afghanistan.
Last year when Merrill and his students launched the project, they were thrilled to receive responses from some of the soldiers, who expressed their appreciation for the packages and also included an official certificate from troops serving in Afghanistan’s Combined Joint Task Force-10, Regional Command-East and the 10th Mountain Division. The students also received personal notes from a few other soldiers stationed elsewhere.
“The thank you from troops in Afghanistan came as a result of this simple act, which was one of several citizenship activities and charity projects blended into my course,” reported Merrill. The letter from the soldiers in Afghanistan also included an explanation of the goals and accomplishments of that particular military unit.
This year, the care packages once again included nut-free candy sealed in Ziploc bags, packaged along with a “thank you for serving” letter addressed to “Any American Soldier.” There were no stickers, construction paper or glitter allowed (apparently due to problems with soldiers’ ability to view them through night vision goggles), just simple notes and drawings.
“The packages were sent to U.S. troops stationed around the globe. The candy served as either treats for soldiers or for them to hand out to children living around where they are stationed,” said Merrill.
Students had written the letters that went along with the Halloween care packages during their advisory periods and in Merrill’s history class. In the notes, students were instructed to offer a “tiny slice of life back home.”
“The students had fun writing about things like what they did on vacations, happenings in their families, descriptions of their pets, what they like to eat, favorite movies … anything Americana-ish,” Merrill elaborated.
The timing of the note writing also made it possible for students to reflect on and inform the soldiers about their recent Grade 8 Trip to Washington, D.C., and their often newfound passion and interest in the American government.
Each year, in addition to the Halloween care package project, Merrill’s history students write letters to their national representatives in Washington, D.C., about reform issues, expressing concerns over such topics as mental health, alcohol related topics, and the treatment and protection of women. Such efforts are part of Merrill’s hands-on philosophy of “making history and not just studying it.”
Harker hosted the 15th annual Howard and Diana Nichols Invitational Debate Tournament on the last weekend of September. A total of 380 students from 26 California schools participated in the tournament, which was run primarily by Harker debate students. In addition to various debate competitions, the event included several workshops taught by Harker debate captains.
“These workshops were dreamed up by Harker captains years ago and have become something we are known for as our successful older students teach Harker and outside students who are new to debate,” said Harker debate teacher Carol Green.
The weekend also included a special novice public forum tournament for debaters in grades 6-8, in which 35 middle school students participated.
The middle school’s annual canned food drive began in early October and will run until mid-November. This year’s drive is being hosted by The Service Club in conjunction with Second Harvest Food Bank. At least 40 receptacles have been placed around the school for students and teachers to donate nonperishable food items.
“It’s a fun and good cause,” said Lorena Martinez, BEST director for the middle school, who is spearheading the project.
Martinez reported that if the students bring in 5,000 cans (10 per student), she and BJ Hathaway, assistant director of the Blackford campus’ BEST program, will dress up as turkeys after the drive’s conclusion. To date, nearly 800 cans have been collected.
“It is a house challenge. Whichever house wins gets 100 spirit points. Beneficium is in the lead as of now,” she said.
Stepping up to help those in need during the holiday season – and year round – is especially important now, as some 15.8 million children under 18 live in households where they are unable to consistently access enough nutritious food necessary for a healthy life, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Earlier this week, Rajiv Movva, grade 9, was announced as a first-place mathematics award winner in the Broadcom MASTERS competition, the finals of which took place in Washington, D.C. Movva’s project, which focused on discovering a natural method for treating type 2 diabetes, earned him a $3,500 prize, to be put toward a summer STEM experience of his choice, and an Apple iPad. “It was really an amazing experience to meet all the other finalists and compete with them,” Movva said. The prizes from the contest were not the only rewards received by the finalists. “All finalists also had a minor planet that was discovered by the MIT Lincoln Laboratory named after them, and they also announced that finalists’ teachers would get their own minor planet as well!”
Another big highlight was meeting President Barack Obama at the White House. “Obviously, meeting the President was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that we were all very excited to have,” Movva reminisced. “That being said, Broadcom MASTERS finals week as a whole was an experience too great to be justly described by words.”
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Oct. 21, 2014:
Freshman Rajiv Movva was recently named a finalist in the Broadcom MASTERS competition and will be headed to Washington D.C. on Oct. 24 for the national stage of the competition, where . “I look forward to meeting and competing with the other students who share similar interests as me!” Movva said. The national winners will be announced on Tues., Oct. 28.
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Five Harker students – the most from any school in California – are among the 300 national semifinalists in the 2014 Broadcom MASTERS program, a science and engineering competition for middle school students sponsored by the Broadcom Foundation and the Society for Science & the Public. Michael Kwan, Rajiv Movva, Anooshree Sengupta and Shaya Zarkesh, all grade 9, and Kaushik Shivakumar, grade 8, completed and submitted their projects during the 2013-14 school year; their projects were chosen from more than 6,000 nominees nationwide.
On Sept. 17, the 30 national finalists will be named. Finalists will be eligible to travel to Washington, D.C., for the final competition; the winner will receive a $25,000 prize from the Samueli Foundation.
This year Harker was thrilled to welcome one of the largest-ever contingents of students from its sister school, the Tamagawa K-12 School & University in Tokyo, Japan. On Oct.14, the 28 exchange students, along with their three chaperones, arrived at the middle school for their first in-person meeting with their grade 6 Harker buddies.
Each fall, as part of a long-running program, the Tamagawa students come to Harker for a much-anticipated weeklong visit. Prior to that, Harker and Tamgawa peers keep in contact through video conferences and email exchanges.
While here, the Japanese students stayed with their Harker buddies and their families. They went sightseeing around the Bay Area, and visited and observed classes at the Blackford campus.
Among their many activities, the students made tie-dyed T-shirts with both the Harker eagle and Tamagawa eagle on them (the schools coincidentally share the same mascot), made slushies, went on a scavenger hunt and enjoyed a bittersweet ice cream farewell party. The Japanese students also joined in on classes such as dance, drama, art and P.E.
The Tamagawa students also spent time at the lower school, where they worked with the kindergarteners on an origami activity. Previously, the kindergarten students had received an album depicting life at Tamagawa’s kindergarten.
Kishan Sood, a grade 6 Harker student, said that he and his buddy, Satoya, had a lot of fun together. “We went to San Francisco and saw a lot of amazing things there.”
After his buddy returned to Japan, Sood received a thank you email from Satoya. “That really made me feel that he had a great time in America and he appreciated everything that we did for him. That made me feel special,” said Sood.
Fellow Harker sixth grader Ruya Ozveren added, “Mao Tominaga is my buddy and she is awesome. We had a great time together. It was really hard letting my buddy go, because she felt like my sister and I’ve never had a sister before. When she left she said she couldn’t wait till I come to Japan. She talked about her family and where she would take me when I got there. I also learned a lot about my buddy. I learned a lot of lessons from this experience and can’t wait for the rest in Japan!”
Jennifer Walrod, Harker’s director of global education, reported that all the students had an amazing time. “When the Tamagawa buddies first arrived everyone was so quiet and shy. But by the farewell party, the kids were all running around, laughing, taking photos and behaving like the best of friends that they have become,” she said.
In other Tamagawa news, middle school P.E. teacher Chrissy Chang spent time in Japan as Harker’s visiting exchange teacher. In the spring, Harker students will head to Tamagawa as part of the reciprocal exchange program. (Look for further coverage on that from Harker News!)