Letter from the Executive Director
Dr. Robert M. Panoff
What a great spring this has been for Shodor, from having so many of our students and teachers honored for their work to topping 4 million webviews in a single month. And now we are about to start a great summer of activity and opportunity that includes workshops for middle and high school students, as well as for teachers and faculty across the country.
For those who have followed Shodor from "Bob and Monte in a couple of small office rooms" in 1994 through our growth of highly-qualified staff and interns across every area of computational science, you will find the many offerings of Shodor this summer continue to make science and mathematics come alive by combining the best of hands-on learning with dynamic, interactive computing.
We'll be hosting nearly a dozen workshops for college faculty and pre-college teachers across the country (see www.computationalscience.org/workshops), while also offering even more workshops and explorations for middle school and high school students right here in the Triangle area (see www.shodor.org/succeed). We will also be taking advantage of our remote location in Carteret County to start helping teachers in the eastern part of the state take advantage of the same professional development we've pioneered from Durham.
I would be remiss if I failed to thank in a special way all of the parents (in fact, I am writing this on Mother's Day) who help support their children in attending activities at Shodor, and I renew our long-term commitment to make sure that no student is ever discouraged from participating in any of our programs due to financial circumstances. I know we can offer the advantage of the Shodor experience to more students, so please do tell the friends of your kids and the kids of your friends.
All the best,
Bob Panoff
Spend the Summer @ Shodor!
Alex Revelle | Intern
A nationally acclaimed web-site and award winning program, Shodor is now offering summer work-shops for middle and high school students; workshops will begin on June 21, 2010.
Basic computer skills are requirements for just about every occupation these days, and Shodor summer workshops will not only give students the basic computer skills to be successful in life but will also help them to learn math and science through use of different types of technologies. Time and time again, Shodor has been recognized as a national leader and a premier resource in the effective use of computers to improve both math and science education.
The summer workshops will focus on a variety of topics for high school and middle school students. There are a variety of different workshop series available for both age ranges. Programming Concepts is a week-long workshop designed to introduce students to the concepts of computer programming, offered June 21-25 for high school students, and middle school students July 12- 16. During those same weeks the Web Design Skills Workshop will take students through the complete process of designing and building a website. Beginning on June 28, the week-long Intro iPhone Development Workshop (only available to high school students) will introduce students to the process of creating an applet for the iPhone. In order to participate in this workshop, students must have taken an introductory programming course either with Shodor or local school districts. Beginning on August 2, the two-week-long Shodor Scholar Program (SSP) teaches students to use advanced computational science technologies, techniques, and tools to study a wide variety of scientific events. A teacher nomination is required to participate in this workshop. Engineers in Training (EIT) is designed to introduce middle school students to the basics of engineering design. EIT workshops will be held June 21-25 for middle school and July 12-16 for high school.
To learn more about the summer workshops and apply to any of these programs please visit Shodor's website.
Exciting Things Planned for Summer Apprentices
Jared Rozenek | Apprentern
How often have you sat at home during summer break and said, "I'm bored"? Would you like to learn how to create an iPhone application or your own personal website complete with animation? Shodor can help you learn to do all these things. Have your parents ever said, "you spend too much time in front of the computer"? If so, I guarantee you would enjoy spending a summer at Shodor in the Shodor Apprentice program. You just might discover that you want to turn your love for technology into a career!
The SUCCEED Apprenticeship program has worked with more than 100 students. Currently Shodor has 15 apprentices. Each apprentice spends six weeks working at Shodor throughout the summer, of which two to three weeks are dedicated to helping staff and students with other summer workshops. The remaining three to four weeks are set-aside for students to learn new skills and work on projects such as developing iPhone applications. Students typically work on these projects in teams of two, receiving help from a Shodor staff member when needed. This summer, the apprentices will enjoy working on a variety of larger scale projects, including Digital Durham, an exciting historical project that will use databases to create a list of residents in Durham in the early 1900's.
Learn more about the SUCCEED apprenticeship program at our website.
Shodor Partners with APPLES, Great Experience
Alyssa Canty | Intern
As a junior at UNC, I was given the opportunity to serve as an APPLES intern at Shodor. APPLES is a student led campus organization whose acronym stands for "Assisting People in Planning Learning Experiences in Service". APPLES' mission statement is to foster sustainable, service-learning partnerships among students, faculty and communities in North Carolina and beyond. By engaging all partners in a rich, community-based curriculum, APPLES' experiential programs foster socially aware and civically involved students. Besides community internships, APPLES offers programs such as alternative break mission trips, job and internship fairs, and courses that allow students to participate in service.
Along with serving 150 hours as an intern, I was required to take a seminar course through the UNC School of Social Work. Our course focused on social justice, citizenship, and service and allowed us to learn valuable inter-personal skills that we could use at our internship site. Site skills that we learned about include communication, conflict management, reflecting and evaluating our work, and working with vulnerable populations, most of which I was able to utilize during my time at Shodor.
Shodor is an example community partner for APPLES. Through Shodor's mission of improving math and science education through the effective use of modeling and simulation technologies - "computational science", APPLES mission of building sustainable, service-learning partnerships among students, faculty and communities in North Carolina and beyond was also achieved. At Shodor I was able to work toward both of these missions and serve the community by working on their online resources and leading workshops. The relationship that Shodor holds with schools, after-school programs, and their interns is a great benchmark for APPLES as it tries to connect the community and with UNC students. I was able to connect with the community through the after-school workshops I taught for Shodor; with these I was able to see how beneficial Shodor's resources are for the community on all educational levels. Receiving an internship at Shodor has been a very rewarding experience; it has showed me how Shodor is the perfect example of an APPLES community partner, and what a difference dedicated people can make in their community.
Shodor Hits 4 MILLION Page Views
Hillary Stoker | Staff
Last year, Shodor received funding from the National STEM Digital Library (NSDL) and the National Science Foundation, which has been used to supplement the National Computation Science Institute (NCSI) project and has enabled Shodor to take their talents on the road, offering more summer workshops last year and this coming summer. NCSI provides workshops covering a wide range of subjects relating to computational science. These workshops are designed for undergraduate faculty as well as high school and middle school teachers, giving participants ideas and resources to use in their classrooms. The return on investment in terms of web usage is amazing; Shodor has seen definite increase in the usage of their online resources in the past couple months. In March, Shodor served 4.25 million web pages and 800,000 visitors, the most page views Shodor has ever received in one month.
Shodor would like to thank all of its partners for sharing in their resources and supporting them in every way possible.
New Staff Bios
Andrew Fitz Gibbon
For as long as he can remember, Andrew has been interested in computers and science. Once in high school, he realized that he also enjoyed teaching others about computers and found himself as an instructor at a summer computer camp. While studying Computer Science for his Bachelor of Arts degree at Earlham College in Indiana, he learned about the field of High Performance and Scientific Computing and became an assistant instructor for workshops from the National Computational Science Institute. Through that experience, Andrew got involved with numerous projects and quickly made it to Shodor, where, as a staff member, he can continue to teach as well as work on projects such as the Bootable Cluster CD and the Undergraduate Petascale Education Program.
Joel Coldren
Joel Coldren is a recent graduate from Durham Technical Community College, with an Associate's Degree of Applied Science in computer programming. He has been working as an intern at Shodor for the past year, and is now joining Shodor as staff. While at Shodor, he has worked as a Java programmer, web site developer, and systems administrator. He is excited by the prospect of learning new skills and working with the apprentices, interns, and staff that make Shodor great!