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TECHNOLOGY Can Smartphones Help Innovative Learning? By: Justin Osborn 9th grade, Clarkston Schools As I look around my class and see students engaged with their smartphones, I wonder how this technology has affected the classroom. Has it helped learning or taken away from it by causing distraction? How will it affect the classroom in the future? With technology becoming regular in class, the line of distraction and utility has become increasingly blurred in recent years. From serving as a dictionary in foreign language classes, to accessing textbooks in Science, phones have become very useful. But on the other hand, phones can and do distract in classes, when students ignore teachers during History or text instead of writing in Language Arts. The question then lies in how we should use phones in school. Some teachers have creatively embraced the phones, having students use them to download apps to study or participate in class. Language teachers experiment with making social media posts in languages other than English. Others will give easy access to textbooks on phones to save the backpacks of their students. There are also teachers who have resorted to taking all phones from students when they enter the classroom, or taking away a phone when it ventures out of its owner’s pocket. While extreme, this allows teachers to make sure their students learn effectively. I believe that teachers should learn how to incorporate these technologies into their lessons to promote innovative learning. By doing so, students will be in the center of what happens in the classroom, which will lead them to better learning habits. Only then a teacher can fully connect with his or her students. To raise innovators, teachers must innovate with new technology. The google artist By: Sonne Kimbad 12 th grade International School, Bloomfield Hills Every Stanford dorm seems to have that creative, go-to person. The felt-pen artist who enhances the hallway white board, the annoyingly smart kid who cuts class to make posters for Big Game and still aces the midterm . . . the only one you’d trust to design the T-shirt. Dennis Hwang was that guy. He graduated with a degree in art and a minor in computer science. Hwang is still that guy. Webmaster manager for the search engine powerhouse Google, Hwang is the “Google doodler”—the cartoonist who embellishes the firm’s wide-eyed typographic logo. With tens of millions of people viewing Google’s home page daily, the guy who used to design Burbank and Cardenal’s dorm shirts is, in CNN ’s words, “the most famous unknown artist in the world.” Hwang, 28, manages a team of 23 people charged with keeping Google’s heavily visited pages technically fit, fast and sleek, but he also has charge of the creative drawings that decorate the Google logo on holiday, special occasions such as the Olympics, and offbeat little commemorations such as artist Edvard Munch’s birthdate. Hwang is modest about his celebrity, but admits he gets hundreds of fan e-mails every time a new doodle posts; sometimes thousands, if he’s done something “particularly surprising,” he say His family moved back to Knoxville when he was in middle school. Hwang found himself speaking no English, trying to follow what was going on. It didn’t take long for him to catch up academically. When it was time for college, he thought he wanted a pure art school, “but when I visited them, none felt like home,” he recalls. “The first place I went at Stanford was the art department and it just clicked. It’s a very free environment. The professors are almost like classmates.” Hwang immersed himself in fine art as well as some programming classes. He also was captivated by Professor Marc Levoy’s freshman seminar Science of Art. Levoy recalls two aspects of Hwang that still ring true: “He smiled a lot and he has a childlike exuberance. In the summer after his junior year, Hwang’s former resident adviser in Cardenal, an early Google employee, convinced Hwang to take an internship as an assistant webmaster. His life has barely slowed since. He devoted his senior year to Google, working 40 hours a week. From the beginning, Google had a sense of humor. A little stick figure illustrative of the event on the Google logo is a clue to where they were. Users loved it, and soon the company hired an outside graphic artist to come up with other simple cartoons to mark special events. Hwang’s original job involved straightforward programming chores, but soon after his modification of a Fourth of July doodle caught the founders’ attention, word of Hwang’s art experience and his talent got around. Pretty soon, Hwang became the official doodler, completing about 50 doodles a year. Hwang creates the images, using an electronic tablet and stylus for his sketches. The doodles are fun, usually whimsical—and sometimes baffling. Know about Gaston Julia, for example? Visitors to Google on February 3, 2004, saw the Google logo with a hurricane-shaped “o” against a backdrop of equations to celebrate the French mathematician. Although he has little free time, Hwang tries to “keep up with the latest tools” in computer animation. His most difficult doodling tasks, he says quietly, involve honoring artists whose styles he has studied and admired for years, such as Claude Monet. Amid an almost infinite supply of people and events to doodle, “artists’ birthdays are the most precious to me,” Hwang says. “I’ve always studied art history and trying to imitate their style is the most pressure.” 6 www.KidsStandard.org Publication INC.
INTERVIEW What made you decide to join Optimist Club? Andrea Schroder I was really involved with other things in the community like the PTA, the school district, and I did a lot of volunteering for all sorts of different causes. So I encouraged my husband to also give back to the community. He got involved with The Optimist Club and really enjoyed it, so I became a member as well, and I’ve been involved for 7 years now. It’s a great group. Don Brose I didn’t know much about it, but I decided to join because I like working with the community. I have been here for 23 years. Tom Middleton I enjoy the speakers. Every week there is a speaker at Optimist Club. Often, these are not speakers that I would’ve necessarily chosen for myself, but I learn about different subjects and broaden knowledge. I also enjoy the friendship and the camaraderie that develop there. What is the best part of the Optimist Club? Andrea Schroder The friendship, and the fellowship, and the people you meet - service-oriented, community-oriented good people that do a lot of different things. A bunch of people are in the Farm Garden club, for example; I can’t grow anything, but I know people who can and how to get a hold of them. There’s a professional network also, especially when it comes to other community events and services. It’s a great network. <strong>Interview</strong> with Clarkston Optimist Club Don Brose Working with kids in schools with the Optimist Youth Clubs. We have seven different youth clubs in Clarkston right now. Tom Middleton We laugh every Wednesday morning. People ask, “why in the world would you want to get up at 7:30 in the morning?” But we laugh; we have a lot of subtle jokes amongst the forty members that regularly attend the meetings, and we always have a great time. With your professional work and family, how do you manage to have time for volunteer work? Andrea Schroder When it comes down to a choice between having a clean, tidy and neat house and doing the things in the community that are important to us, we’re going to choose the community. Every one of us has an obligation to society to do what we can to give back; we take that seriously and we enjoy it, too. So you have to be willing to make the time. Q A Andrea Schroder Business Consultant; married, three children Don Brose I make it a priority. It’s like a hobby. If you like what you’re doing, it’s not an effort. Tom Middleton You have to try and fit the volunteer work into your schedule, and that is easy to do if you really enjoy it. Don Brose Lighting Showroom Owner and Manager, married Tom Middleton County Commissioner, Farmer; married, three children, four grandchildren Who do you think should join Optimist Club and why? Andrea Schroder I think anyone who has an interest in improving the quality of life in our community and improving opportunities for kids should join. It’s a very social group, and you can be either very or minimally involved. It is always fun; we are always laughing. If anybody feels life is too busy or something is missing, the Optimist Club is a great organization to join. Don Brose Everybody should! It’s for anyone that wants to be around good people and stay connected with the community. Tom Middleton People that are about forty, with kids in school, would get a lot out of the club. We learn a lot about what’s going on, especially with Clarkston Schools. There are teachers and principals that are members of the Optimist Club. We have kids who are honored for being good citizens in their school. It’s really refreshing to see the good things kids do. We also see the leadership that Optimist Club teaches to the kids in the Octagon Clubs. So even our kids and their friends can capitalize on the things that the Optimist Club does. October 2015 7 Publication INC.
Page 1 and 2: www.kidsstandard.org ISSUE 6 | OCTO
Page 3 and 4: EDITORIAL CALENDAR 2015-2016 Editor
Page 5: CREATIVITY By: Olivia Sanders, 9 ye
Page 9 and 10: ART On top of creating Advertising,
Page 11 and 12: Connect With Us! Sloan Museum, Long
Page 13 and 14: ARTS AND SCIENCE Power of Classical
Page 15 and 16: PARENT’S CORNER CREATE AN INNOVAT
Page 17 and 18: We have activities for all ages, sk
Page 19 and 20: COLLEGE VOICES Interview of Kids’
Page 21 and 22: Continued from P20 operations. They
Page 23 and 24: PARENT’S CORNER THE LAST WORD: IN

Interview

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