Burnaby Now May 6 2016

Page 1

NEWS 3

Of minks and mountains

COMMUNITY 11

Gogos get going

SPORTS 32

Joe Sakic is Number 1!

5

THINGS TO DO THIS WEEKEND FRIDAY MAY 6, 2016

LOCAL NEWS – LOCAL MATTERS

There’s more at Burnabynow.com

SEE PAGE 15

EDUCATION

City girls create a winning app By Cornelia Naylor

cnaylor@burnabynow.com

When Cameron Elementary teacher Micheline Kamber put out a call for girls who wanted to try their hand at developing an app for the Technovation tech competition, she didn’t expect a team of nine-year-olds to sign up. She knew they’d be up against girls as old as 14, in a contest that challenges participants to identify a problem, create a mobile app to solve it, code the app, make a business plan and pitch the whole thing to expert judges – all in three months. “We didn’t expect the little ones to show up,” Kamber said, “but I couldn’t say no.” Good thing. On Saturday,Tec Girls – a team made up of Grade 4 students Barbara Castano, Mitra Abtahi, Jasmine Shim and Liyah Li – won the middle school category of a regional pitch competition at SFU with their app, City Helper. The app is a game designed to help new students get to know their community.

TEC GIRLS: From left, Cameron Elementary School Grade 4 students Jasmine Shim, Liyah Li Barbara Castano and Mitra Abtahi pose with the winning app they designed for Technovation, a global technology competition for girls 18 and under. At a regional competition hosted by SFU for the first time this year, the Tec girls won the middle school category with City Helper, a game designed to help new students and their families get to know the community. PHOTO CORNELIA NAYLOR Using Google Maps, it encourages new students – transfers, international students, new immigrants and refugees – to explore and learn about things in their new neighbourhood, like parks, pools, community centres, libraries and doctors’ offices. Visiting new places earns players points, with extra points being awarded for visiting the places in person – something the app tracks by GPS. “I’ve been new to two schools,”

Abtahi told the NOW. “I feel really bad for the new students, so I’m just like, ‘Hey, I know how it feels to be new to lots of schools because I’ve been new to two, so why don’t we just make an app that can help them know their community.’” This year’s Technovation challenge was to solve a problem in the community using mobile technology. With 61 students (or 16 per cent of the student population) at

Cameron new to the school this year,Tec Girls tackled the challenge of helping new kids explore their new community. Technovation is a global competition designed to narrow the gender gap in technology. The size of that gap is still a lot bigger than Cameron learning support teacher Micheline Kamber would have expected in this day and age. Originally a computer scientist, she was one of only three wom-

en in her class when she was doing her training back in the 1980s. But she said friends who teach at the post-secondary level tell her those numbers haven’t changed much. “I’m shocked that it’s not changed since then, that it’s still very imbalanced, so now that’s why I’m really excited about getting girls excited about careers in computer science.” Continued on page 8

Greg Frank quits job – for second time

First it was forVancouver, now it’s Surrey By Cornelia Naylor

cnaylor@burnabynow.com

Burnaby secretary-treasurer Greg Frank wouldn’t say he had dodged a bullet by accepting a job offer from the Surrey school board this week over a similar offer from

Vancouver earlier this year. He avoided all comparisons between the Vancouver district, which faces school closures and layoffs because of an anticipated $27-million shortfall next year, and the Surrey district, whose current secretary-treasurer has called

his district’s projected $4-million shortfall “insignificant.” “I am happy I have made the right decisions in total in terms of Burnaby and Surrey,” Frank told the NOW. After 16 years in the district, Frank announced this week he is leaving Burnaby to take up the secretary-treasurer post just south

of the Fraser. It’s the second such announcement Frank has made this school year. In September, he said he had accepted an offer from Vancouver but reversed that decision at the end of October. Frank’s wage in Burnaby had been “below par” for years, ac-

cording to school board chair Ron Burton, but a provincial freeze on salaries for exempt staff like assistant-superintendents and secretary-treasurers has prevented the district from offering him more money to stay. Continued on page 8

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