Mott Clubhouse News 2nd Quarter 2011

MOTT COMMUNITY CENTER COMPUTER CLUBHOUSE NEWS May 2011

Mott Clubhouse partnerships with Liveminds Inc..

This past Friday April 29, 2011, Live Minds Inc. Vicepresident Damon House met with computer clubhouse manager Alvaro Luna to develop the basis of a partnership to enhance the Math Thinker program developed and implemented at Mott Computer Clubhouse, this meeting is a follow up to our January 2011 speaker of the month event when Liveminds Inc. CEO, PhD Electrical Engineer Mr. Kevin Green visited Mott Computer Clubhouse as speaker of the month and was very impressed with the level of effort and the vision that clubhouse embraces.

Mr. Kevin Green stated: Live Minds and the Mott Computer Clubhouse will work together on promoting career interests in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) for their student population. One way is for us to teach the students of the clubhouse how to create Web pages that focus on the mathematical significance of diverse cultures throughout the world that have made major impacts not only during that time but long-lasting impressions on the history of Humankind. We also plan on coordinating an event this year that involves having a real-time, virtual STEM conference with many other computer clubhouse's around the country.

We are strong believers of the computer clubhouse model and the future role they will play in education as a way to solve the current educational crisis we are facing in America. Our first action is to provide 15 scholarships for our Live Minds’ Homework Hotline, a simple and powerful Web-based application that allows a teacher to conduct a live, on demand video lesson from any internet-connected computer.

For more info: http://www.livemindsinc.com/about/

Mott Computer Clubhouse receives award from Brain Injuries Inc. During the last 2 years Brain Injuries services has awarded Mott Computer Clubhouse awards for the partnership established in order for Brain Injuries clients to provide volunteer hours to Mott Computer Clubhouse.

This partnership has provided Mott Community Center members with a valuable support for the Math Thinker program.

Our current volunteers M.D. Steve Michalski and Computer Programmer Kevin Takeguchi have been the core supporters of the Math Thinker program. They have also been instrumental in the testing and implementation of new ways to combine technology with critical thinking process.

Because of this volunteer work, Dr. Michalski was selected as a recipient of the 2011 Governor's Volunteerism and Community Service Awards in the Outstanding Adult Volunteer Category. Only one recipient is selected and awarded for each of the three categories: Adult, Senior and Youth Volunteer Awards, and he is the winner of this year's Outstanding Adult Volunteer Award. "These awards recognize the significant contributions of Virginia citizens to the life and welfare of the Commonwealth and its people." Congratulations!!!

Last year Mr. Kevin Takeguchi received the Fairfax County Adult Volunteer Award for his work tutoring students in math at Mott Computer Clubhouse.

Leon Kim accepted at Thomas Jefferson HS.

We were pleased to receive the news that our clubhouse members, Leon Kim, was able to pass the required tests to be acepted at Thomas Jefferson HS. Leon has been a member of the clubhouse for more than 3 years and he is part of the Math Thinker program and the Rocket and Robotics research team. We are very proud of his success. Congratulations!!

Mott Fall in love with Fashion 2011, an amazing event of work, persistence, collaboration and creativity

If we can say one thing is that Mott is a place were collaboration works and creativity flourish. In March 2011 members of the Mott Community enjoyed the Fall in love with Fashion 2011 where Mott Community Center participants were presenting the various types of clothing designs.

The A+ Dropouts band were a great attraction and full of energy, while Mr. Jamal was doing his best as MC and keeping the audience motivated, the DJ was absolutely fantastic as all the hard work of Mott Community Center staff (Teens, After School and Clubhouse) but very particularly by Miss Warda and Miss. Carmen who spent many hours making Mott participants doing their best with their limited time after homework.

Computer Clubhouse Members 55 and older celebrated Women's History Month

At Mott Computer Clubhouse we did not have to look outside for roll models for Women's History month, we do have women that we can look up to for roll models.

The Mott Information and Technology (MIT) program at Mott Community Center computer clubhouse has been implemented for residents of Fairfax County 55 and older during the last 3 years. The county award winning program has been able to provide a consisting training in computer

technology. The program consists of 2 or 3 quarterly workshops during the year with a 3 to 5 year curriculum development.

Our latest group, most of them women (95%), who has been at the clubhouse for 3 years, finalized the first workshop for the year 2011"Introduction to Digital Photography Beginners level II" .

Congratulations!!!

Mott Computer Clubhouse Members participated in the Championship VEX Robotic tournament (on their own words) Tyrannosaurus Vex Robotics is a homeschooling robotics group. We first started Vex Robotics in October, and have gone through multiple designs for our robot for maximum simplicity and efficiency in the Vex Round Up Competition. In the end, we decided on a "Plunger" as our members call it.

You can see us there; we're team 5270A! Our second tournament; the middle school Mid-Atlantic Championship was very exciting. We were in 18th at the end of the qualification matches, but we got picked to be on an alliance with the team in 1st place. We then proceeded on to win our qualification matches, semifinals, and, the finals. We also won the build award, for the best build of your robot, and an excellent engineering notebook.

You can see pictures of the competition on the "Our Pictures" page.

For more info follow the link. http://www.tvexrobotics.org/

Mott Community Center receives awards for Black History month collage, designed by Mott Center participants.

Mr. Paul Woods and Mrs. Tilly Blanding presented a Certificate of Appreciation to Mott Community Center represented by Mrs. Mimi Balden -Director of Mott Community Center- , James Shields and Shayane Jones -Mott Center participants-.

James and Shayane worked very hard with Mr. Harry McCAl in a collage designed in honor to Black history month and presented at Fairfax County Black History Month celebration at the Fairfax County Government center in February 11, 2011

Equal Footing Foundation/Fairfax County Computer Clubhouse at Botball 2011

The Mott Community Center Computer Clubhouse went to the workshop at the University of Maryland for the 2011 Botball tournament.

Our team with more than 12 members worked for several weeks with the assistance of Ryan Fellman and TJ taylor in the management and programing of the units and in collaboration with Kingsley Common satellite clubhouse (Formerly CLCP) The documentation team has got great support from couples of our members mom, who has been doing an incredible job helping our team.

Computer Clubhouses participated at the regional tournament at Woodson High School with great success and excitement among all the clubhouse members. https://picasaweb.google.com/Mottclubhouse/2011BotballTournament?feat=directlink

Computer Clubhouse Member receives gold medal.

Mott computer clubhouse member, Christopher Williams, received a gold medal for his participation in the Computer Maintenance Technology at Chantilly High School.

Christopher is working towards his A+ certification and he would like to pursue a career in Information Technology, so he is taking the necessary steps to make sure it happens and so Mott Computer Clubhouse. Congratulations to Christopher!!.