WLMS Field Day is a Success!

Thanks to all the staff in the building today that helped make Field Day 2012 a success! Just like it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a bigger village to run an event that involves every student and staff member! The students seemed to enjoy it!  Brooke Middleton, PE Teacher Extraordinaire

Actually, the biggest Thank You goes to  Brooke and Steve for organizing such an amazing and successful field day for our school. To see more pictures, click here:https://picasaweb.google.com/104907339060231496895/2012FieldDay

A Good Idea...

Thanks Mike Smith!

Hug Me for a Coke?

Field Day 2012 Expectations!

We are looking forward to a great day this coming Friday at the Lake!

An Interesting Way to Look at Earthquake Frequency

This summary of global earthquake activity adds a couple of dimensions I have not seen before. First, the magnitude of the earthquake is indicated by the volume of the sound played (as well as by the size of the circle.) Second, the cumulative total number of earthquakes is plotted across the screen. Look and listen for the 9.0 Honshu earthquake around 1 minute 50 seconds.(Source Blick's Picks)

6th Graders Travel to NorthBay

Earlier this month, our 6th graders attended outdoor school at NorthBay located in Cecil County, Maryland. NorthBay is a premier environmental learning center, located at the top of the Chesapeake Bay, designed to expose students to phenomenal learning opportunities in a dynamic environment, where students can make enriching, and life changing decisions about who they want to become and how they will respond to life.

I had the pleasure of spending two days participating with some of my sixth graders in the activities that they were assigned to do (Zip Line, learning about clams and the high ropes course). During this time, I got to learn so much about my students and some really interesting information about the Bay.  I had such a great time and I truly appreciate all of the hard work Joanna Tanner, Laura Mettle, Emily Warner and the rest of the WLMS staff for making this trip possible. I also want to thank all of the parent volunteers for taking time out of their busy schedules to go with us! 

For more information about NorthBay, click here: http://www.northbayadventure.com/ To see photos from this year's trip, please click here: https://picasaweb.google.com/104907339060231496895/OutdoorEducationApril2012

Tech Expo Was a Huge Success!

On Friday evening, WLMS hosted our first Technology X-Pedition: Take a Byte on the Wilde Side! At the expo we had the following speakers:

 

We also had several demonstrations take place. They included:

 

I want to thank all Mr. Rogofsky, Ms.Dunster, Mrs. Barham, Mr. Spicher and all of the other volunteers who helped to make this event so successful. In addition, I want to thank the First Lego League robotics teams for competing during our tech expo. They were: 

 

Nuclear Cantalopes

Wilde Lake Department of Food Safety

Tech TurtleBots

Chesapeake Science Point

Robotic Alliance

To see pictures from the event, click here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/104907339060231496895/WLMSTechExpo2012

Take a Byte on the Wilde Side!

WLMS Pride! Debate Team Wins, Again!

Debate Team Wins Competition!

The WLMS Debate team defeated Patapsco Middle School on March 29 at the Spring Countywide Middle School Debate held at Murray Hill Middle School.  The debate team has spent may hours preparing to defend the affirmative resolution, "Be it resolved that Howard County Public Schools should institute single gender classes."  The students did and excellent job delivering the speeches, arguing head to head with their opponents during the Crossfire questioning session and then provided a convincing conclusion to impress the judges.  The judges praised and complimented the team on their thorough research of the resolution and defense of their position.  It was an excellent competition and great learning opportunity for the students.  As this was the last countywide debate for the year, the eighth graders on the team are looking forward to participating  in debate in high school, and the returning members are anxious to continue developing their debate skills next year.  Students interested in participating on the debate team next year should contact the GT Resource Teacher, Mrs. April Motaung. Congratulations to the following students: Noah Jack Franc Josh Sophie Lauryn Elly  Da'Myah Isaac Delaney Alex Jair Daisheau Isaiah

Rules of Possession

I have to tell you, sometimes middle schoolers 

use this same play book... ; )

Welcome Dr. Foose!

Welcome Dr. Foose to Howard County!

Baltimore Sun Article
By Sara Toth, stoth@patuxent.com

March 27, 2012   7:40 p.m.

Renee Foose was so "ecstatic and honored" to be named Howard County's next superintendent, she said she would have begun working months ahead of her start date if she could.

"I would have started at 8 a.m. (Tuesday) if they would have had me," she said.
Pending a contract negotiation, an official vote and approval from the state superintendent, Foose will become superintendent July 1, following the retirement of current schools leader Sydney Cousin.

Foose, 45, was named the next Howard superintendent Tuesday, March 27, about 24 hours after she was first presented to the public as one of two finalists for the position.

The decision from the Board of Education, said Board Chairwoman Sandra French, came at around midnight Monday, and was a unanimous vote, made after several hours of board members poring over community feedback behind closed doors.

"She is our first choice, and we are so thrilled she said yes," French said.

Foose is currently deputy superintendent of Baltimore County schools — the 26th largest school system in the country, about twice the size of Howard's 50,000-student system. She's held that position since April 2011, and prior to that was associate superintendent for Montgomery County schools.

She will be the 16th superintendent in the county, and the first woman superintendent in the system's history.
The other finalist for the position was S. Dallas Dance, chief middle school officer for the Houston Independent School District in Texas. On Tuesday morning, Dance was named as Baltimore County's next superintendent. (See accompanying story).

A 1993 graduate of Towson University, Foose began teaching in 1996, after leaving the state police, and received a master's degree in curriculum and instruction from Loyola University in 1997. She became an assistant principal in Frederick County in 2000. In 2004, she earned a doctorate of education from the University of Delaware.

She was a principal in Washington County from 2003 to 2006, then started her career in Montgomery County as principal for two years before being promoted to Director of School Performance. In 2010, she earned an master's degree in business administration from Loyola University.

"I know education, from driving a school bus, to being a school secretary, to being a classroom teacher," Foose told members of the public Monday. "My experience, my passion and my ability to move a great school system even farther along (are my qualifications)."

Foose, who is single and has no children, joined Baltimore County in 2011 — amid some uproar over her salary, which at $214,000 was about $20,000 more than her predecessor had earned — after serving as director of school performance, director of shared accountability and associate superintendent in Montgomery County.

Salary specifics have yet to be discussed for the job here, Foose said. In December 2011, the Howard board approved a pay scale "in the range of $265,000" for the position.
Favorable reviews

Foose's experiences impressed local community leaders, who said they were pleased with the board's decision.

"This is a smart person who has obviously worked very hard and achieved a lot," said Paul Lemle, Howard County Education Association president. "My first impression is admiration; going from a school bus driver to a state trooper to a teacher to a principal to, ultimately, a superintendent in 15 years is a meteoric career path. It speaks to someone having a lot of drive and a lot of skill."

Lemle said Foose's work in Montgomery County was of particular interest to him, in part because of that county's practice of interest-based bargaining and also because of a program known as Peer Assistance and Review — a system designed to provide frequent and helpful feedback for struggling teachers. Howard County currently does not have a collaborative effort between the union and school system to review employees, he said.

"That practice provides lots of feedback for improvement and working toward the right goal, the goal of helping a person along to be the best teacher they can be," Lemle said.

During public sessions, Foose discussed ways to engage the community through social media and focus groups to gain input on an array of subjects, including the capital and operating budgets. That interest on parent and community involvement impressed Chaun Hightower, president of the PTA Council of Howard County, who said Foose struck her as a warm, personable candidate.

Encyclopaedia Britannica stops printing after more than 200 years

Source: The London Telegraph

The publisher is ditching its weighty tomes to concentrate on an internet version, after recognising that knowledge was changing so quickly that the they were becoming obsolete as soon as they were issued. Its handsomely-presented volumes have been in print since they were first published in Edinburgh in 1768.

They will stop being available when the current stock of 2010 editions runs out, the Chicago-based company said. Executives said the end of the printed, 32-volume set had been foreseen for some time.

Jorge Cauz, president of the Encyclopaedia Britannica company said: "This has nothing to do with Wikipedia or Google. This has to do with the fact that now Britannica sells its digital products to a large number of people."

The top year for the printed encyclopedia was 1990, when 120,000 sets were sold, Cauz said. That number fell to 40,000 just six years later in 1996, he said. The company started exploring digital publishing the 1970s. The first CD-ROM version was published in 1989 and a version went online in 1994.

Just 8,500 volumes of the 2010 edition have been shipped. The final hardcover encyclopedia set remains available for sale at Britannica's website for $1,395. Online access to Britannica will be available for $70 a year.

"The sales of printed encyclopedias have been negligible for several years," Cauz said. "We knew this was going to come."

The company plans to mark the end of the print version by making the contents of its website available free for one week.

Online versions of the encyclopedia now serve more than 100 million people around the world, the company said, and are available on mobile devices. The encyclopedia has become increasingly social as well, Cauz said, because users can send comments to editors. "A printed encyclopedia is obsolete the minute that you print it," Mr Cauz said. "Whereas our online edition is updated continuously."

Britannica has thousands of experts' contributors from around the world, including Nobel laureates and world leaders such as former President Bill Clinton and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It also has a staff of more than 100 editors.

Mr Cauz said: "To me, the most important message is that the printed edition was not what made Britannica. "The most important thing about Britannica is that Britannica is relevant and vibrant because it brings scholarly knowledge to an editorial process to as many knowledge seekers as possible."

Lynne Kobayashi of the Language of the Hawaii State Library said: "While Wikipedia has become ubiquitous, the Britannica remains a consistently more reliable source."

A.J. Jacobs, who read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica for his book, The Know-It-All, told the Financial Times: "I am a bit heartbroken. "There was something so wonderfully concrete about the print version, and I loved the idea that all the world's knowledge could be contained in those pages."
Explorer Ernest Shackleton took a volume on his doomed Antarctic expedition and is said to have burnt it page by page to keep warm.

"You can't do that with the internet," said Mr Jacobs.