Day 28 - Andrew Mullen, Marshall Simonds Middle School Music Teacher

I have always been a fan of traditional music - both as a listener and performer, and have made it part of my life's work to keep the tradition of playing folk music alive, by passing this on to my students - both children and adults.  

When I got to Marshall Simonds in September, I found a great band and choral program, but saw no opportunities for kids to participate in this often under-looked art.  I asked around, and eventually found a student who played violin.  I asked if he would be interested in learning THE FIDDLE.  "What's the difference?" he asked. Ah, sit down, my son, and let me tell you a tale.  Daniel and I started meeting Wednesdays after school. 

One student on violin eventually turned into two, and after a few weeks of "shaming the vibrato out of them" we started to have a nice sound as a trio!  

Then, it turns out that my colleague, Marcia Medvitz, played "one fiddle tune," as she described it, and began joining us in our Wednesday sessions.  Another student named Neil plays piano, so he recently began joining us, as well.  There are rumors of other students and faculty who are threatening to join our growing band, as well.  

So, what began as two people playing through some fiddle tunes after school, has turned into a weekly, intergenerational hootenanny of American and Irish traditional music: hoedowns, jigs, reels, hornpipes, polkas, waltzes, and the like. You'll find fiddles, banjos, guitars, accordions, and even some singing.  

We are learning one new song every week, and then play through our old tunes, discussing style, and working on our tone and increasing our speed to dance tempo!  We currently have a repertoire of about 10 songs.  We will be having our unofficial debut at the Thanksgiving Assembly on November 20th, playing an updated version of the traditional song "Old Groundhog" (with updated lyrics called "Turkey Day!") with the MSMS Select Chorus.

The video above is of fthe our of us playing through "The Swallow Tail Jig" this week. 

Day 27 - Yash Kamani, Burlington High School Sophomore

MASSCue Reflection

A few weeks ago, we, as members of the BHS student help desk, were presented the opportunity to visit and present at Masscue 2012. This conference was held in the club suites inside Gillette Stadium. The help desk crew got to go down on the 24th to give an hour long presentation on our help desk course and how it works within our school.

Our presentation lasted about an hour in one of the suites on top of Gillette Stadium. We made our presentation a panel discussion type event. At the beginning, our instructors, Mr. Andy Marcinek and Mr. Tim Calvin presented a small keynote to the audience describing the course. The keynote lasted about fifteen minutes and we then made our way into the panel discussion with questions from our audience and answers from us, the students.


The whole event was well organized and the Mass Cue team was very helpful. There were a variety of cool and helpful tools available from different vendors. The event was mainly vendor based with different vendors attempting to sell their ideas, tools or technologies. There were quite a few interesting ideas that I thought would actually be very useful. At the same time there were ideas and tools that seemed unnecessary and costly in any learning environment.

This was my first experience at any education conference of any sort. Overall I really enjoyed it. There was a formal atmosphere at the conference, but the events and people really made it seem casual and comfortable. A Patriots Practice sighting made the day all the more better. I would strongly recommend students attending a Mass Cue Conference sometime in the future for anyone interested in new ideas or technology in the education field.

Day 26 - Xin Zhang, Burlington High School Junior

Apple is losing it

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”

That was 1983. There were no iPhones, no iPods, no iPads. Apple was in its 7th year of existence. Steve Jobs wanted to hire John Sculley, then-President of PepsiCo. This was Jobs’ pitch. This was also Jobs’ vision.

In 2012, Apple has officially lost it.

This is not meant to be a diss; the Jobs-led Apple succeeded in changing the world. A decade ago he introduced the iPod, which changed the music business. 5 years ago, not many people had a smartphone in their hands, then came the iPhone and now its the norm. 2-3 years ago, tablets were virtually unknown; now iPads and other tablets are everywhere. That string of ground breaking innovations has stopped following Job’s death, however.

iPhone 5. The new iPad. The new new iPad. iOS 5, 6. Siri. Apple Maps. They’re just not game-changing products. They’re follower products. Not that they’re bad; they’re great little playthings, but it’s just not matching the competition. There’s nothing new anymore, its just minor improvements that other devices already offer for a higher price. Siri and Maps, on the other hand, awful, awful apps.

You have to wonder how long Apple can go on just making incremental upgrades on their existing products. Take a page out of Google’s playbook: they’re doing that and more.

Day 25 - Emma Jones, Burlington High School Sophomore

I am a swimmer for the Burlington High School Girls' Swim Team and this year we have been incorporating the use of iPads into our practices. The idea of using iPads during practice was brought to our attention when our coaches discussed what our themes for this year were going to be. Our first theme was unity and we were able to accomplish this through team-building activities such as pasta parties and team sleepovers.

Our other theme was the “science of swimming," a way for each member of the team to develop as swimmers.  In order to accomplish this theme split practices were implemented. Every Wednesday practice was split in with one half of the team practicing for the first 45 minutes and the second group practicing for the last 45 minutes of the practice. During the half of practice where swimmers were not in the pool, we use the iPad video cameras to film our strokes so that we could have a visual of what we were doing correctly and what we need to work on. The ipad’s use during practice has overall proved very helpful and has helped everyone to improve. More advanced swimmer’s have been able to perfect their technique and newer swimmer’s have been able to get the basics down.

Day 24 - Hannah Lienhard, Burlington High School Sophomore

A brief MASSCue Reflection

BHS Help Desk Students at MASS Cue 2012 

MassCUE was personally the first major conference I had been to. Not that it was particularly large, it was merely the first conference I had been to that was almost completely vendor oriented. At BPSCON 2012, we were gearing up for the coming school year by nipping off problems at the bud, where at MassCUE, we were expected to almost sell our concept of a help desk to a large group of teachers.

The idea behind a conference presentation in and of itself was simple enough – to tell a body of people your experience with this particular class, and share our opinion or two about being a student in a 1:1 learning environment. That said – no amount of facts will prepare you for the social interaction segment of an interactive presentation. It is one thing to know the facts as they are, and another to present them in an appealing way that reflects your opinion on the subject, while still remaining professional. To add to this, we chose an open forum, question and answer style of presentation, adding to the pressure of an accurate and informed response.

In general and despite the pressure it was an informative and, dare I say, fun experience. It was fascinating being in a community of educators who, for the most part, just want to enrich the lives and learning of their students. 

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Day 23 - John Lyons, Pine Glen Elementary School Principal

4th Grade Rocket Day

The fourth grade teachers, students and parents had a great time today at Rocket Day (check out all of the great pictures below).  With help from Ms. Pavlicek and Mr. Musselman from the Burlington Science Center students learned about such concepts as gravity, thrust and force.  Fourth graders also learned about Sir Isaac Newton (One of Mr. Musselman's favorite scientists).

Students greatly enjoyed launching their rockets and using their iPads to record the event.   Students walked away from this hands-on learning experience telling me that science and learning is fun.  The fourth grade teachers and I learned this first hand as we had a 'blast' launching our rockets.

Day 22 - Jake Moreira, Burlington High School Sophomore

The Importance of Passwords

In class today, the topic of passwords came up and we were talking about how there were 72 different options for a one character password.  I though it was fascinating so I did a blog post on it to share what I found

Everyone in the world has a password whether it is to log in to facebook or to unlock your iPhone. The only thing that is stopping you from identity thieves and hackers is a word or a sequence of numbers.There are 72 options for a one character password, the equation for finding the possibilities of you password is 72 ^ x   and x being the amount of characters in you password. Most of the time the minimum of characters that are required for the password is 6 characters. That means that there are 139,314,069,504 combinations, that sounds like a lot but hackers use multiple computers  and that amount of combinations would not take a very long time. This link explains passwords very well http://www.commoncraft.com/video/secure-passwords 

If you don’t want to watch the video, basically it explains that passwords keep people out that you want out. Your password should not be something close to you like you dogs name or a significant date. Your password should be something like a phrase that is had to figure out. Then you can put  numbers and characters in it to make it harder. An example is “In God We Trust” take the first letters in each word to get IGWT,then make it 1GWT. Then take that and modify it to something like 1GWTfb for facebook and and 1GWTtw for twitter. Passwords are important make sure yours are safe.