Green Hope High student Alex Bainbridge will represent the U.S. at the World Competition for Microsoft Excel 2010 in Las Vegas on July 29 to August 1. Bainbridge is one of six U.S. students who earned the chance to compete at the 2012 Certiport Worldwide Competition on Microsoft Office. More than 250,000 U.S. students competed to demonstrate their proficiency in using Microsoft Office desktop computing applications. Bainbridge is a finalist in Microsoft Excel 2010. The top three winners in each category will receive scholarship prizes for $5,000, $2,500 and $1,000 respectively.

“What a great honor for Alex, Green Hope and Wake County,” said his teacher Martha Roettgen.

Countries around the world host local competitions to determine country and regional representatives based on exam scores and completion times. Participants who outperform their peers to make the final round of the competition generally have perfect or near-perfect exam scores and completion times well below the allotted examination time.

The Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) certification was created to meet the growing demand for individuals to leverage the full features and functionality of Microsoft Office Systems. Students who earn certification demonstrate proficiency using the newest versions of the desktop computing applications including Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Current students who pass a qualifying exam and are enrolled in an approved, accredited learning institution are eligible to compete. The student must be between the ages of 13 – 22 on June 15, 2012.

Daniels Middle School students’ video entry entitled “Making Tracks Talk Show” won third place in the “Making Tracks Video” contest sponsored by the Transportation Services of the NC Department of Public Instruction. Teacher Coral Stevens advised the team of students.

The top three winning teams will receive free entrance to the 2012 N.C. State Fair where their video entry will be featured in a display about school bus safety. Clips from all contest entries will be compiled into a 12-15 minute video about pedestrian safety to and from the bus. This video will be posted on the school bus safety website and used as an educational tool for school bus safety throughout the state.

The students will also receive a “Making Tracks” T-shirt designed especially for the contest.

Derek Graham of NC DPI Transportation Services offered the students special thanks for taking the time to create the video to help educate fellow students about proper school bus behavior and pedestrian safety to and from the bus.

Thanks to principal Elizabeth Battle for sharing this story.

Teams from four WCPSS schools earned honors at the Odyssey of the Mind 2012 World Finals held May 23 in Ames, Iowa.

Teams from Morrisville Elementary, Partnership Elementary, Sycamore Creek Elementary and Carnage Magnet Middle qualified for the World Finals by working for months and being recognized as the best in the state. The competition recognizes exceptional creativity as teams find solutions to one of five problems. The WCPSS teams were among 815 teams at the world finals.

The team from Morrisville Elementary earned top honors for the WCPSS schools earning third place among Division 1 teams that tackled problem 1: Ooh-Motional Vehicle. The problem required teams to design, build and drive a vehicle that traveled a course where it encountered three different situations and displayed a different human emotion at each encounter. The challenge emphasized the technical risk-taking and creativity of the vehicle’s engineering for travel and change of emotional appearance.

The Sycamore Creek Elementary team finished 16th and the Partnership Elementary team finished 20th among Division 1 teams that worked to solve Problem 4: You Make the Call. The Carnage Magnet Middle team finished 7th among Division 2 teams that worked to solve the same problem. For problem 4, teams designed and built a structure made of only balsa wood and glue that supported as much weight as possible. The testing of the structure included mathematics in its theme.

East Cary Middle School seventh grade students were buzzing about the book and movie The Hunger Games. So language arts teachers Cassie Haran and Sahar El Shafie and physical education teacher Gayle Light decided to capitalize on the excitement. The teachers created a unit to incorporate reading, media literacy, technology and physical activities all centered on The Hunger Games novel.

To prepare for the unit, students viewed the movie trailer of The Hunger Games and discussed the summary of the book and movie. Students then looked at propaganda posters, discussing “good” advertising, and created their own district sign for the “opening ceremony” to take place in their PE classes. Students were divided into districts, just like the people in the novel were separated into twelve districts. In their groups, each district had to create two commercials to gain sponsors or votes using the advertising techniques they had learned. The commercials including a written script and do-it-yourself props were filmed with flip cameras, edited and then students voted for their favorites.

In physical education classes, students, or tributes as they are called in the novel, competed in 2-3 physical activities each day. Before each activity, the PE teacher read a passage from the novel. Then students participated in activities that reinforced the meaning of the passage. Points were awarded to the top finishers in each activity. Teams also received points for their language arts posters and commercials.

The final activity of the unit was a trivia challenge. Students were required to run as a team to various cones that were scattered on the playing field. Each cone had a trivia question from the book taped to the inside. Teams were awarded points for the place that they finished and the number of correct answers. At the end of the unit, points were totaled and the team/district with the most points won a copy of the next book in the series, Catching Fire.

 Thanks to media specialist Deanna Harris for sharing this story with GotNews.

Students created posters to support their team’s district tributes in competitions.