Digimom’s DigiCom Blog

We have completed the school-wide reading of The Battle of Jericho. Students have participated in two Book Club meetings and have turned in their two book club forms. The assignments were graded by teacher teams Monday, November 17th during our after school faculty meeting. This grade is worth 50 points and will be counted by all teachers of each student. 

Junior Service Learning hours are due no later than December 1, 2008.  Students completed six hours on our Service Learning Day in September and should have 20 more hours that they have completed outside of school hours for a total of 26 hours.  Time verification sheets with signatures, along with completed learning logs for each day of service must be turned in to Ms. DeSimone on or before December 1st! Students will use their learning logs and any photographs they have taken to create a PowerPoint to use for their oral presentation on December 9, 2008.  The learning logs will also be used to write their 3 - 5 page reflection essay. This is an extremely important project that will be used as a school-wide grade by all teachers.  It is worth 100 points. All project information can be found on the Junior Documents page of our website.

Juniors have spent close to a whole month working on the exercises and projects in chapter 2 of Graphic Design.  These exercise and projects are the basis of all graphic design.

All seniors are now involved in internships. They are also relieved to be finished with the senior mastery research paper. At this point they are all (or should be) deeply involved in developing advanced skills and have several mastery product items completed.  In January the seniors will give mid-year presentations about their progress for the first half of the year.

All Digital Communications students are reading fiction books related to the major for our 2nd quarter literacy requirement.  They are reflecting about their books every week on our DC Student Blog.  Please enjoy reading their comments. 

Now for some bragging about my students:
Senior Bruce Turman has been very successful with logo design.  His logo for SteelTown Development, LLC was selected by the company owner to become their official business logo.  Coastal Eco-Charters owned by an Academy teacher, Captain Rutenberg, has also chosen Bruce’s design for his new logo.

Captain Rutenberg, has also selected junior Bridgette Scott’s design to use on t-shirts for his company.

Bruce and Bridgette have each earned a free charter from Coastal Eco-Charters, with four of their friends, for their hard work.

Meals on Wheels of Horry County, spearheaded by Kara Uhrain, has chosen junior Denise Jimenez’s logo design to use on some of their publications and as a t-shirt design. They are also having some discussion about how they would like to use the design submitted by Matt Timbes.

Junior Sam Roberts was selected to participate in the Poetry Out Loud Competition.  His poem choices were: “It Couldn’t Be Done” Edgar Albert Guest and “We Wear the Mask” Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Jacob Norton and Bruce Turman have been accepted to attend Coastal Carolina University next year.

Congratulations to all of these students.

Digikids have survived Spirit Week 2008.  We had lots of fun dressing up every day, dancing at the end of lunch, taking tons of photos, and still accomplishing quite a bit of work.  

Congratulations to Katelyn and Kyle for getting the first issue of the year of  ”The Academy Post” finished and sent to the printer on Friday!  All students will receive a copy of the newspaper by the end of next week.  Ask them to bring it home for you to read.

Digital Communications students will receive a copy of their first quarter report card in their major on Monday, November 3, 2008.  I must have acknowledgement that a parent has seen the report card.  You can email to tell me you have seen it or you can sign it and send it back with your student.  

All Digital Communications students should have a fiction book related to the major approved by me for our second quarter literacy requirements by Wednesday, November 6, 2008.  They have had two weeks to choose a book.

Our first advisory board meeting is going to be a joint meeting with all majors’ boards this Thursday evening at 6 PM.  The school is providing a catered dinner along with guest speakers to talk to us about advisory boards. Thank you to those of you that are able to volunteer and be members of the board.

The next AAF-CC meeting will be held on November 20th.  The quest speaker is Kira Perdue, Vice President of Trevelino/Keller Communications Group, based in Atlanta and Charleston.  The topic will be Using Web 2.0 in your 2009 PR Plan.  This could be helpful to seniors with their mastery project and give the juniors ideas for future projects as well.  I hope several students will be able to attend. Permission slips will come home this week and must be returned to me one week in advance of the meeting.

I will be attending the South Carolina Ed Tech Conference Thursday at the Myrtle Beach convention Center. I hope to learn some new things to bring back to my classroom. 

If your student is going on the trip to Disney there will be some detailed information coming home soon about the trip, along with an itinerary. If the final payment has not yet been made please do so ASAP.

Remember to email any teacher that you want a progress report from at any time.  All teacher email addresses are available on the staff directory.

Life has been so busy I have not had time to blog.  Here we are at the end of first quarter already.  Teachers at AAST have to have grades out to the base school by October 29th, so will be ending the grading of things at the end of this week.  Report cards will be issued on November 3rd.

I hope everyone has explored the new HCS website and the new AAST website.  Be patient with us at AAST because it will take quite a bit of time for everyone to learn how to work on their own part of the website. In fact it is my job to teach everyone how to do that. Please email me and let me know what information you would like to see on our school website.

I am looking for parents to serve on the DC advisory board.  The board consists of college faculty members, local business partners, alumni, students, and parents.  The purpose of the advisory board is to continue to improve the major through the knowledge of industry standards, college expectations and curriculum needs.  To apply for the annual Perkin’s Grant in the spring I must have a committed board consisting of all the aforementioned members.  We must have a minimum of two meetings before I apply. We normally have about four meetings per year.  Our first meeting of the school year is going to be Thursday, November 6th at 6:00 PM.  This meeting is going to be a joint meeting for all majors. Our principal, Mr. Burgess and the HCS Director of Career and Technology Education will speak during dinner. After dinner we will split up into the separate majors for a very short introductory meeting. Please let me know if you are interested in serving on the board.

The guest speaker at the October AAF-CC meeting helped us understand the differences in advertising to diverse groups of people.  It was extremely informative!  Next months meeting will be held on November 20th.  The quest speaker is Kira Perdue, Vice President of Trevelino/Keller Communications Group, based in Atlanta and Charleston.  The topic will be Using Web 2.0 in your 2009 PR Plan.  This could be helpful to seniors with their mastery project and give the juniors ideas for future projects as well.  I hope several students will be able to attend.

Our first field experience of the year was a success.  In the morning we enjoyed a show about the night sky here in our area at Dooley Planetarium located on the Francis Marion Campus in Florence, SC.  From there we went to USC for lunch at Russell House where we also met with some AAST alumni. After lunch we listened to an admissions presentation along with the Pre-Med students.  From there we ventured to another part of the campus to the Journalism  & Mass Communications building. We received folders with detailed information about all the majors in this department.  A senior student, Daniel Jones, gave a presentation about his internship at Post No Bills, that has turned into a job.  He shared many items that he helped to design for such clients as Disney and the Olympics.  Van Kornegay, Head of the Visual Communications Sequence, shared some portfolios of present and previous students with us. Those were very informative and gave students some great ideas for their own portfolios. Bonnie Drewniany, a faculty member in the Advertising and Public Relations Sequence, shared a teaser video for our April 2nd invitation back to USC for the Ad Bowl Award Presentation.

Yes, first quarter interims will be issued to students Tuesday, September 30th.  Time sure does fly when you are having fun, or overwhelmed; which ever it may be for the students.  I am sure some of the juniors feel overwhelmed trying to get used to our crazy schedule and all the “extra stuff” we do at the Academy.  I know some of the seniors are feeling overwhelmed with the senior research paper, setting up internships, learning new and advanced design skills, and everything else in their lives! Anyway, please sign and return the interim or better yet, keep the interim but send me an email that you have seen it.

Now to tell you everything that is going on in DC and at AAST:
-  Seniors had all of last Thursday as a research paper day.  The English teachers came and worked with each student individually to help them develop a good thesis and outline for their paper.  It was a successful day!
- Juniors are doing their oral presentations about their summer research projects this week (late enrollment students had Sept 19th for a due date for all summer work).
- Dale Dobis, a local business owner was a guest speaker in our classroom last week.  He has a new home construction business, Steel Town Development, LLC, that needs a logo and tag line.  He explained in detail to the students the way he came up with the name of the company, the mission of the company, and the personality of the company.  What this means is that “Digikids” have the chance to design the actual logo and tag line for a real company.  This is a huge opportunity.  Just think how that will look on a resume and college application!  Please encourage your student to submit some designs.  All entries are due October 1st.
- All major students at AAST have the opportunity to take a free trial SAT on Monday, September 29th.  All they need to do is sign up with me.  What a great way to find out what it is all about!
- The next AAF-CC meeting is October 16th at the Dunes Golf Beach Club! This is a wonderful opportunity for students to mingle and meet the local professionals in their career major.  The guest speakers are well known professionals in the business and the food if phenomenal. The October speaker will be Bob McNeil, President & CEO of Images USA, Atlanta, GA; topic - Diversity in Advertising. The student price is $20 per luncheon. Permission slips will be given out next week and are due back one week prior to the meeting.
- Friday, October 17th we are traveling to Florence and Columbia, SC.  The bus will leave AAST at 6am to head for McCleod Hospital.  We are stopping at McCleod because we are sharing a bus with the Pre-Medicine major and they are going to a medical presentation.  I am trying to arrange for DC students to have a tour of the newest technology the hospital uses.  We will then move on to USC for lunch, a campus tour, and a presentation about admissions.  Our last stop will be the SC State Fair where “Digikids” will have the opportunity to have some fun while learning about all the graphic design involved in this type of event. Permission slips will be given to students next week.  They must be signed by parents and all teachers.  $30 will need to be paid in advance for the bus.  If enough students participate the $30 may also pay the state fair entrance fee.  Students will need to bring money for food and rides. 

Other items of interest:
- School wide reading book club meetings will take place on October 10th and November 14th.  Sharon M. Draper, author of The Battle of Jericho, will visit AAST in January.
- All DC students are required to complete the weekly technical reading assignment on line at nicenet.org
The assignments are to be completed in class every Friday.  All students are required to update the English reading log every Friday also.
- I am looking for parents to serve on the DC advisory board.  The board consists of college faculty members, local business partners, alumni, students, and parents.  The purpose of the advisory board is to continue to improve the major through the knowledge of industry standards, college expectations and curriculum needs.  To apply for the annual Perkin’s Grant in the spring I must have a committed board consisting of all the aforementioned members.  We must have a minimum of two meetings before I apply. We normally have about four meetings per year.  Meetings will be held on Wednesday evenings at 5:30 PM. Please let me know if you are interested in serving on the board.
 

Seniors have been working hard at researching ideas for their senior research paper.  They will have all day Thursday to work on finalizing their thesis statement and to create and outline for their paper.  Remember this is an 8 to 12 page research paper on a topic that is helping them with their senior mastery product.  See the DC Website for due dates.  Seniors have also been working on learning new design skills that will help them with their senior mastery products.  Internships should be all set up by the end of this week.  the hope is that students have found a business that will work with them to become part of the company at least for about five months.  Some students are finding that some businesses only want them once per week, so those students will work on some other projects with Ms. D.

Juniors will be completing six hours of service learning in the community on Thursday.  Remember a lunch break is not part of the actual six hours.  Of course you can take a lunch break, but you need six hours of actual volunteer time to count for the hours you would be in class if at school for the day.  The rest of your hours (20 more) are to be completed outside of the regular school day.  All service learning hours and learning logs for those 20 hours are due December 1st!

No juniors are participating in this months AAF-CC meeting, but I hope they will plan to attend next month. The October meeting will be on the 17th.  The price for a student to attend has increase to $20 per meeting.  There is a student membership of $125 for the year also.  The membership will look impressive on a resume and college applications.  I would suggest that seniors consider this. Some of the seniors attending are going to sell raffle tickets when we get there, as it is a fantastic  opportunity for networking with real graphic designers, marketers, etc.  I am looking forward to listening to the guest speaker discuss his ground-breaking ideas concerning emerging opportunities in the world of Social Networking.  It should be of special interest to my students because they are on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Also in the month of October we plan to begin our

Academy school wide reading of books by Sharon M. Draper.  Ms. Draper will also be our guest at AAST in January!

Junior parents, if you missed Parent Orientation please email me to let know when you can come to school to sign some important papers that were given out that evening.  I am available before and after school.

Just about the time we get on a roll something stops us. Students not having district login information has postponed the beginning of the senior research paper.  Hanna (the storm) messed up all of the end of week plans for last week, so we had to take a little step back Monday.  Today, the juniors were all set to complete their first open book online quiz, but the Internet was down all morning! So now it is time to step back and punt.

Important news: 
- Parent Orientation is this Thursday, September 11th, from 6 - 7:30 PM.  Please be seated in the theater by 6 PM so the presentation can start on time. **Please sign and return the form that will let us know if you are attending or if we need to set up an individual appointment for you at another time. These were given to students last week along with the Health information sheet that also needs to be returned to school. 
- Junior Community Service is now Junior Service Learning. The date for the 6 hours of service has been  changed to September 18th, so the proposals are due this Friday, September 12.  I must have these by Friday, as I have to create and send a report to the district about where my students will be that school day.

- The first AAF-CC luncheon is also September  18th.  Juniors that would like to attend, can break their service learning into two sections and take a lunch break to attend the luncheon.  Permission slips will not need to be signed y teacher, but MUST be signed by a parent.  Seniors will need parental permission to drive or ride with an other student from school that day.
- Seniors must have their internship set up (all paper work in) by September 19th.  They were required to work on this over the summer, so if you know your DC senior has not worked on this, please help me push them.  This is an important part of the senior year.
- I am working on plans to visit USC and the State Fair on October 17th. The cost for the bus per student will be $30.   The cost to get into the State Fair (required of all who go on the trip) is $8. Ride coupons are sold separately and are optional. Students will want money for lunch and dinner.  If approved by district we will leave at 6 AM and return to AAST at midnight!

Watch for more later this week.  Remember, if you sign up for RRS feed, you will automatically be sent a notice when I add to this blog.  
 

As you may have heard we have gotten off to a very busy start.  I warned the juniors everyday last week, that every week is pretty much the same with many things going on at once.  So, what is in store for the juniors this week?  Juniors will participate in two Book Club Meetings to discuss the book they read this summer related to the major.  They will begin the introductory chapter of Illustrator, a powerful program used for designing text, drawing and illustrating.  Juniors are required to have their junior community service proposal completed and turned in by Friday September 5, 2008 for the six hours of service they will complete on September 11, 2008.  Juniors are also required to have a book picked out for this quarters technical reading requirements by Friday, September 5, 2008.

Seniors will begin serious work on their senior research paper this week in their major and in English class.  They are required to make revisions to their senior mastery proposals to include the books they are learning from this year, their internship site name, and the topic of their research paper.  Seniors are required to keep a weekly log about their progress on their year-long mastery project and write their own learning plan for the following week every Friday.  There are many amazing projects getting started in the DC senior class this month.  Please be sure to ask your senior to share their progress with you!

Don’t forget the first AAF-CC meeting is September 18, 2008.  Signed permission slips must be returned by September 11, 2008.  See the link to the right for more information about the guest speaker.  Students are required to dress in casual business attire and will need $10 to pay for the luncheon that day.

The first day of school at AAST is August 25th.  All students will report to their major classroom on the first day of school.  School begins at 8:10 am with the tardy bell ringing at 8:15 am.  Juniors will be participating in Orientation sessions the mornings of Monday - Wednesday.  Seniors will remain in their major during that time to finalize senior mastery proposals to begin work on their senior research paper. Each afternoon all students will rotate through that days regular classes, just on a shortened schedule. Thursday we will do a regular A day schedule and on Friday we will do a regular B day schedule.  Actually Wednesday afternoon will be a little on the crazy side.  All students that will be in Algebra 2 or Pre-Calculus will take a pre-test after lunch.  From 1:15 - 2:15 juniors will go to a Junior Community Service Presentation in the theater.

The junior research paper has been separated from the Community Service project.  Juniors will receive updated information the first week of school. The junior research paper will be a school-wide 3rd Quarter project.

We will begin to work on senior research papers immediately.  Official introduction to the paper in English classes will take place on September 2nd and 3rd.  That means that by the end of the first week of school seniors must have a concrete idea about their topic.  

Remember summer reading, and summer projects are due the first day of school.  Anything that is turned in after the first day can only receive a maximum grade of C. 

Any student planning to take the SAT on October 4th must register ASAP.  Mr. Poland will be holding free SAT prep classes every Tuesday and Thursday right after school.

We will be doing our school-wide fiction reading the second half of September and the first half of October.

Note to juniors: as you can see a whole lot of “stuff” will be going on immediately.  I hope you have prepared yourself to stay organized and manage your time wisely.

Why does summer vacation go by so quickly?  On the last day of school we all think, “Oh we have 10/11 weeks of summer ahead of us, WOOHOO!” It ends up feeling like four weeks.  Ok, enough jabbering……

The seniors have been reading one of two books for their major summer reading.  They had to chose between Transmission by Hari Kunzru or The virtual Life of Lexie Diamond by Victoria Foyt.  As they are reading they will complete a book club form for each half of the book.  The seniors will also create a five page website or a 6 page magazine spread about their book (using the guidelines they were given).  The senior have also been working on revisions of their senior mastery project proposal this summer.  They were required to send revisions to me via email by July 1 and Aug 1.

The juniors have been reading this summer also.  The had to choose one of the two following books for their summer reading for the major: The Gospel According to Larry by Janet Tashjian or Feed by M.T. Anderson.  The juniors also had to complete two book club forms for their book of choice.  They will also choose three scenes from their book to recreate digitally.  

As you can see, literacy and a bit of major skill building is part of preparing for the following school year at AAST!  

I’m reading Double Helix by Nancy Werlin.  It is a mystery about a young man, a famous doctor, Qunicy Wyatt, who owns Transgenics, and the mysterious Huntington’s Disease.  You will have to read the book to learn the truth about Eli’s genetic make-up and how all the characters are linked.