Harker’s Tech Club has developed a new election software program. The program used during freshman Honor Council elections in January will be brought back for the upcoming April ASB, Student Council and Honor Council elections.
Work on the program began last spring and was coordinated by Prag Batra, grade 12. Batra said, “Some of the biggest challenges involved developing an intuitive drag-and-drop interface and bug testing.”
The software is online and Web-based. Users visit a website on a designated school computer, enter a code given to them (to preserve anonymity), then indicate their preferences for each officer position on a series of screens. On each screen, users drag and drop their preferred candidates from the left side of the screen into a list on the right side in order of desired preference.
Students used PHP, CSS, HTML and JavaScript to build the software, which is hosted as a website on a server.
The most memorable moment for Batra was seeing the site come to life after several hours of coding testing. “It was very rewarding in the end once we had a fully working final product ready,” said Batra. “I think this sense of knowing that we built a working product that would then be used by hundreds of fellow students was what made the entire project worthwhile for us.”
After the software was ready for the Honor Council elections, Batra worked with teachers and administrators to deploy it and set it up for the elections.
Pauline Paskali, upper school English teacher and one of the first to see the technology said, “These young people are extraordinary in their willingness to spend countless hours working on projects for the school. They deserve to be commended for their skill, their perseverance and their generosity.”
A number of Harker students placed well in the 20th annual United States Open Music Competition (USOMC) recently held in Oakland.
Since 1992, the competition has worked to promote the best of classical talent among young musicians, including all aspects of classical repertoire in solo, duet, ensemble and concerto events.
The USOMC bills itself as an organization “dedicated to creating an environment where local, national and international students of all levels strive to achieve musical excellence.” The organization continues to grow from increasing public support and is known for maintaining the high quality of a top-notch piano competition.
Among the Harker students who placed well in the respected competition were: Kai-Ming Ang, grade 4,Kai-Siang Ang, grade 7, Amy Jin, grade 6, Andrew Jin, grade 9, Sanjana Kaundinya, grade 9, Alexander Mo, grade 7, Brandon Mo, grade 6, and Andy Semenza, grade 6.
April 11, 2012
Eagle update! Boys golf defeated Crystal Springs Monday 191-221 and Pinewood yesterday 186-210 to improve to 6-1 on the season. Maverick McNealy, grade 11, continues to blister the competition shooting a 33 and 31 this week. The team faces SHP Monday.
Baseball defeated Gunderson Monday 4-0 to improve to 6-7 overall. Junior Kevin Cali had a great game going 3 for 4 at the plate with a run scored. He also pitched a complete game allowing only two hits. The boys travel to Gunn Friday.
By Dan Molin
April 10, 2012
Girls lacrosse is currently first place in league after defeating Mercy-Burlingame 13-11 on Davis Field. Wendy Shwe, grade 11, scored five goals and Christine Lee, grade 10, had 21 saves in goal. The girls are on a three-game win streak and hope to make it four in a row with a victory over Sequoia at Harker Wednesday.
The girls swim team had a great home meet on March 28, defeating both Notre Dame and Castilleja. Harker won 10 of 11 events, including a 1-2-3 sweep in the 100-yard butterfly by Katie Siegel, grade 12, Manon Audebert, grade 10, and Lucy Cheng, grade 12.
The 200-medley relay of Kimberly Ma, grade 10, Amie Chien, grade 11, Cheng and Siegel won and qualified for CCS.
The 200-free relay of Audebert, Chien, Rachelle Koch and Tiffany Wong, both grade 12, won and qualified for CCS.
The 400-free relay of Audebert, Siegel, Wong and Ma also won and qualified for CCS.
Audebert won the 200 free, qualifying for CCS; Ma won the 200 IM and 500 free, qualifying for CCS in both.
Siegel won the 100 fly and the 100 back, qualifying for CCS in both. Koch won both the 100 free and 100 breast events.
In the boys intersquad meet, Kevin Khojasteh, grade 12, shattered the Harker 500-yard freestyle record, previously set by Daryl Neubieser, grade 9. Karan Das-Grande, grade 11 and Albert Chu, grade 10, also had great swims in the 100 fly and 100 free. The swimmers will head to the Los Banos Invitational this Saturday. Wish them luck!
Varsity boys tennis went 3-0 before the break with wins over Homestead, Priory and King’s Academy, completing its season with a dominating 7-0 victory. Derek Tzeng, grade 12, played his best match of the year and won 6-1, 6-1. All the doubles teams won easily. Chris Chang and Nikhil Narayen, grades 11 and12, won at #1, 6-1, 6-0; Rahul Desirazu andJason Chu, grades 11 and 9, won 6-2, 6-0; and Nikhil Panu and Justin Yang, both grade 11, completed the doubles domination, 6-0, 6-1. The boys are 6-4 overall, 5-2 in league and face Crystal Springs Tues., April 10.
At the second league track and field meet of the season, Isabelle Connell, grade 11, placed first in both the 200 meter and 400 meter. Sumit Minocha, grade 11, took first in both the 200 meter and 100 meter. Tyler Yeats, grade 11, and Corey Gonzales, grade 9, were first and second in the 1,600. Gonzales and Krish Chandani, grade 10, were third and fourth in the 800 meter. Yeats was second in the 3,200 meter. Claudia Tischler, grade 10, her first meet back from injury, got first in the 800 meter. Ragini Bhattacharya, grade 11, placed first in the 3,200 meter. Vedant Thyagaraj, grade 10, got third in the 400 meter.
Harker throwers went first, second, fourth and fifth in shot and second, third, fourth and fifth in discus. Michael Chen set a new school shot put record of 41’ 7”, eclipsing the old mark set by Thomas Enzminger ’10 by a full foot. Matt Giammona, grade 11, was second in both shot and disc.
At the prestigious Leland Invitational Saturday, Minocha won the 200 meter with a lightning fast 22.42. Michael Chen, grade 11, broke his recently-set Harker shot put record with a throw of 42’, good for seventh place. Bhattacharya and Tischler placed fifth and eighth respectively in the 1,600 meter. Results: http://www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/MeetResults.aspx?Meet=147852#1067
Both Minocha and Connell are currently ranked in the Top 10 of CCS in the 200-meter run!
Boys volleyball went 4-1 at the Watsonville Tournament, good for fifth place out of 20, and the silver division championship. The boys are now 9-10 overall and face Homestead and Lynbrook this week.
Softball defeated King’s Academy 8-2 before the break. Ashley Del Alto, grade 11, was three for four with six RBIs! Alison Rugar, grade 11, pitched 15 strikeouts. The girls try to improve upon their 5-3 record with games at Saratoga and Presentation this week.
Our golfers defeated King’s Academy, but suffered their first defeat of the season against Menlo before the break. The boys are now 4-1 and face Crystal Springs today.
Baseball gave perennial power Menlo all it could handle before the break keeping the game tied at 1-1 through six innings before Menlo eventually pulled away with the victory. Kevin Cali, grade 11, was one for three with an RBI. The boys are now 5-7 overall, 1-1 in league and have three away games this week.
Harker’s Clean Tech team, a new club sponsored by Smriti Koodanjeri, upper school chemistry teacher, came in third at the inaugural Clean Tech Competition Student Challenge on March 20, announced the National Science Teachers Association and Applied Materials, Inc., which sponsored the competition.
The Clean Tech competition is a collaborative student design contest developed to inspire the next generation of leaders and innovators in the field of clean technology. It immerses high school students in real-world challenges that illustrate the powerful potential of clean technology to address problems that confront humanity.
The competition involved students, ages 13-18, from the San Francisco Bay Area and Xi’an, China. The challenge posed to students was “Solar Solution to the Rescue.” Under the guidance of a teacher or other adult team leader, teams of students designed solar-powered solutions to basic human needs identified in the aftermath of a natural disaster.
After identifying a situation, students explored the issue and presented their clean tech solution to a panel of industry and education experts for judging. Harker’s team, which consisted of Maya Sathaye, Shelby Rorabaugh and Lorraine Wong, all grade 11, won third place with its project: A Solar Alternative to Charge Electric Wheelchairs. In addition to the distinction of winning, the team won $1,000 to use toward education.
Students interested in alternative energy may want to attend the upcoming Green Teen Summit on Sat., April 14 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. hosted at Harker’s upper school campus. The student-organized conference for Bay Area high school students interested in environmental activism will feature inspirational speakers and a wealth of resources to help young people get involved with environmental efforts at school and abroad. Tickets are $10 for students and $15 for adults (plus a nominal ticketing fee). A continental breakfast and vegetarian lunch is included in the price of the ticket, which can be purchased at the Green Teen Summit’s Eventbrite page.
About 60 students from grade 10 spent a day in mid-February serving the clients of InnVision, a homeless shelter in San Jose. Signups for this event started as a trickle a few weeks prior, but quickly gained momentum. With the signups came a generous flow of donations, in cash and kind, and several parents stepped up to volunteer their time and make the event memorable for the folks at InnVision.
The students sorted toys and clothes, cleaned hallways and bathrooms, did gardening and neighborhood cleanup, and came together to cook a sumptuous meal for about 50 of InnVision’s clients. Victor Adler, teacher and sophomore class dean, was there to lend a helping hand with his students.
Following a brief introduction and tour of the shelter by InnVision staff, the students were divided into groups of 10. Each group spent the rest of the day rotating from one activity to another, including weeding the garden, cutting fruits and vegetables for lunch, mopping hallways or sorting toys.
The students displayed their creativity in setting and decorating the lunch tables, then donned aprons and gloves to serve soup, garlic bread, chow mein, naan and Indian curry, a tri-tip beef entrée, followed by cake and fruit salad for dessert.
The shelter’s guests were a happy lot as they ate with relish. “The warm day meant hard work both indoors and outdoors but the sophomores did it all with a smile on their lips and a sparkle in their eyes, knowing that their efforts were making it a day to remember for those less fortunate than themselves,” said Naren Nayak (Avinash, grade 10), one of many parents who helped prepare the lunch and supervise the student activities.
The unspent portion of the donations collected for food totaled $861 and was donated to InnVision. Erika Sutton, InnVision’s volunteer coordinator, said, “Our sincere thanks to members of The Harker School’s tenth grade class who held a very productive service day at InnVision Georgia Travis Center, a daytime drop-in center for homeless and at-risk women and children.”
Students were busily involved in a variety of projects including sorting through clothing donations, planting flowers, reorganizing a class room and art room, and cleaning the center’s great room. A very special thank you goes to Nayak, who coordinated the entire effort, including engaging other parents to volunteer.
Jaynie Neveras, community relations manager for InnVision, was very appreciative. “How wonderful that these compassionate sophomore students would make time during their break to volunteer and give back to the community!” she said.
“They were able to see firsthand that due to the economy, the face of homelessness has changed forever. Even once comfortably established families are now in need. And whether the students planted flowers, sorted donations, or prepared and served up a tantalizing lunch, they truly made a difference,” said Neveras. More information about donating to or volunteering at InnVision can be found at www.innvision.org.
Harker’s robotics team participated in mid-March in the University of California, Davis Sacramento Regional, where Eric Nelson, the robotics advisor, received the prestigious Mentor of the Year award. The Davis tournament was an excellent opportunity for the team to introduce its influx of freshmen students to robotics competitions as well testing its robot against teams from Northern California and the Sacramento Valley.
Robotics competitions involve pitting robots against each other in a game. This year’s game was called Robot Rumble, in which robots attempted to score points by shooting foam balls into basketball-like hoops of varying heights. The robots were controlled by a Kinect motion-sensing device as well as by remote controls. To see an entertaining animated walkthrough of the game, please click here.
Though Harker’s shooter had some minor problems, the team was confident they could have a fully-functional and proficiently-working robot at its next competition. Abhinav Khanna, grade 12, the team’s press liaison, said, “Overall, the team had an excellent opportunity to bond and put our engineering abilities to the test, and in the end, every member came away with a better understanding of the game.” The team also participated in the Silicon Valley Regional at the end of March – watch for the report – and will enter the championships in late April.
Students interested in mobile technology got a special treat on March 21 when young entrepreneur Ashutosh Desai spoke to the Tech Club about developing games for iOS (the Apple mobile operating system), even with only basic programming skills. Desai also discussed his new startup, makegameswithus, which offers programming tutorials and community support.
A new contingent of visiting students arrived from Tokyo’s Tamagawa Gakuen last month, again experiencing the rich life of Harker students firsthand.
The 25 visiting high school students were on a nationwide tour of colleges, and took time out of their hectic schedules to tour Harker’s lower and uppe rschool campuses. They observed classes, spent time at college counseling and joined the junior class on an Eagle Buddies outing.
“The college tour was the first trip of its kind made by Tamagawa. They were visiting Stanford so decided they needed to come see us as well,” said Jennifer Walrod, Harker’s director of global education.
The Tamagawa teens were warmly escorted throughout the day by volunteer Harker students, including freshmen, juniors and seniors. They arrived in the morning and split up into two groups, one going to visit college counseling, the other observing such varied classes as theater, economics, English and Japanese. Then they regrouped as a team to join Harker juniors on a visit with their Eagle Buddies at the lower school.
“This was especially fun for them to observe, especially since they got to see the kids all dressed up for St. Patrick’s Day. They enjoyed watching them play various games and asked lots of questions about what the younger students were doing,” recalled Walrod.
After enjoying an outdoor lunch there, they returned to the upper school to finish class observations and visiting college counseling. Both Tamagawa teachers and students alike voiced how impressed they were at how many Harker students and teachers spoke Japanese.
Harker’s forensics team had a number of top finishes in March, both locally and nationally. At the California Coast National Forensics League Qualifier, Harker took third place in overall sweepstakes and second place in debate sweepstakes. Aakash and Akshay Jagadeesh, both grade 12, as well as Aneesh Chona and Anuj Sharma, both grade 11, qualified to the NFL National Tournament in Indiana in June. In Duo Interpretation, the team of grade 9 students Madhu Nori and Nephele Troullinos earned fourth place, coming ever so close to pulling off the rare feat of qualifying to nationals as freshmen.
In Humorous Interpretation, Andy Wang, grade 10, earned fifth place but is already the first alternate because one of the students who placed ahead of him is not attending in another event. Nori also reached finals in Original Oratory, earning sixth place honors, and she is now the second alternate to Nationals because one of the students ahead of her has also chosen another event. Several more students made semifinals at the tournament, including Ashwin Chalaka, grade 10, and Sonya Chalaka, grade 12, in Duo Interpretation, Vivek Sriram, grade 9, in International Extemporaneous Speaking, and Steven Wang, grade 9, in United States Extemporaneous Speaking.
Harker had many successful qualifiers to the state championship (held in April in San Francisco). Sonya Chalaka qualified in Impromptu, Andy Wang qualified in Humorous Interpretation, freshmen Nori and Troullinos qualified in Duo Interpretation and sophomore Arjun Kumar qualified in Congressional Debate.
At the JV and Novice Policy and Lincoln-Douglas Debate Nationals Tournament hosted by Woodward Academy in Atlanta, Ayush Midha and Arya Kaul, both grade 9, made it to the top eight policy debate teams in the country before being defeated in quarterfinals.
The largest regular season tournament the team attended during the year was in February at UC Berkeley. This tournament draws thousands of competitors from all over the country. Harker sent almost 200 upper and middle school students to the tournament and ook first in overall debate team sweepstakes and second in overall team sweepstakes!
Berkeley Middle School results included Aditya Dhar, grade 7, who made it to varsity Congressional Debate semifinals. Sophia Luo and Lisa Liu, both grade 8, went undefeated in junior-varsity Policy Debate preliminary rounds and made it to the sweet 16. Liu was also in the top 15 named speakers at the tournament. Panny Shan, grade 8, and Steven Cao, grade 7, made it to the double-octofinal elimination round in junior-varsity policy debate. Grade 7 student Divya Rajasekharan made it to the octofinal level of varsity Humorous Interpretation.
Upper school students at Berkeley produced some of the best in Harker’s history: