Sixteen Maine schools have already pledged to participate, and Project>Login will host an Hour-of-Code Dojo at the Augusta Civic Center on Dec. 14
More than 5,000 Maine students from 16 schools will join a national campaign to demystify computer science during the Hour of Code campaign in December – and additional schools may register through Nov. 15. The event is scheduled to coincide with Computer Science Week from Dec. 9-15, during which Project>Login will also host Maine’s first statewide Hour of Code Dojo.
York students Patty McMurray, Andrew Fitzgerald and Todd Brockelman (left to right) gather water quality data in a freshwater channel of the Pantanal, a region of Brazil.
York Middle School science teacher Jeff Wilford might annually explore the swampy wetlands of Brazil, but don’t mistake him for Indiana Jones. It’s research he wrestles, not anacondas.
Wilford admits he’s not much of an adventurer, but when the opportunity arose to partner with Earthwatch and the National Geographic Education Foundation to travel with a team of educators to the Pantanal region of Brazil in 2003, Wilford dusted off his pith helmet.
Since 2006, Wilford has returned to explore the Pantanal each summer with students from York High School.
“We wanted to give students a real dose of what it means to be a biologist in a remote and challenged region of the world,” Wilford explained. “As well, we have strived to create an unmatched cultural experience.”
Kayleigh Bowen (no relation) shows Commissioner Bowen how she used a matrix to track her own progress in meeting learning standards at Gray-New Gloucester Middle School, one stop on a tour of schools and programs doing the work envisioned in the Department’s strategic plan.
GRAY – Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen is on the road again. But this time, instead of gathering information to develop a strategic plan as he did last spring, he’s sharing the results of that work.
Bowen visited schools and programs Friday as a way to showcase the Maine Department of Education’s strategic plan, developed with the input of hundreds of teachers, administrators, parents, students, taxpayers and others he met with on a “listening tour” last year. Bowen unveiled the plan in January, but said he hadn’t been able to share it yet due to the work of the legislative session, which officially ended this week.
“What we’re talking about here is how do we get the best return on our investment in education,” Bowen said. “We spend more money on K-12 education in Maine than any other program – we’ve got a vision and a strategic plan built on the best thinking of many, many people, and we think it’s going to help our kids graduate better prepared for success in college and in the work place. That’s good for them and it’s good for Maine’s economy.”
It was an ambitious decision, to say the least. Two high school freshmen, twin girls, selected Japanese as their language of choice at a school that didn’t offer Japanese.
That was more than two years ago. Katie and Emily Morse are now juniors at Machias Memorial High School, and their learning dilemma has worked out just fine, thank you very much. Or, arigatou gozaimasu, as the twins would tell you.
AUGUSTA – Twenty student artists will have an audience of more than 72,000 students and teachers for their artwork starting this fall. The 20 students from across Maine have won the honor to have their artwork included in the Maine Learning Technology Initiative laptop screensaver for the 2012-13 school year.
Maine DOE Newsroom 