Corey Grbavach’s video
project, entitled
The Legendary Battle Between Ice Cream and Dogs has
been selected as the special category winner Best
Animation in the 44th Annual California
Student Media Festival. Corey is a student in
Robert Villegas’ Multimedia Design and
Production class at Fullerton Union High School.
The California Student Media Festival will include
the work in its May 22nd celebration.
Hundreds of entries were received from all over the
state and competition was said to be “fierce.”
A plaque with the name and
year of the award will be presented to Corey to
acknowledge his excellent work integrating media and
education. Corey will be an honored guest at the
Festival held May 22, at the Huntington Beach
Library and Cultural Center, 7111 Talbert Avenue, in
Huntington Beach, from 9:00 am-12 noon. Clips of
winning projects will be shown. Also, for the first
time, there will be California Student Media
Festival t-shirts available for purchase. Check
www.mediafestival.org
for for more information.
Since Corey already received a categorical award, he
is automatically being considered for the Grand
Prize Award. Grand Prize Award-winning schools will
receive $1,000.
Click here: Don't miss
the
movie!
Whodunit?
Esperanza’s Medical Sciences Academy Classes
Vie with Each Other for Solutions to Crime
All five sections of Valerie Easton’s ROP Medical
Sciences Academy students at Esperanza High School
were told, “Follow the evidence trail,” before they
tried to solve the murder of a Fullerton College
co-ed staged in classroom H-9.
The CSI team of Johnathan Tran, Briana Garcia and
Jacky Alfaro were on the scene, cameras in hand,
noting placement of clues for detectives with yellow
numbered tent cards and bagging evidence for
laboratory examination.
The students all have roles to play: detectives
Miguel Lopez and Ryan Belanger were heard repeatedly
asking the victim’s boyfriend, Drew Bretzling, what
his shoe size was. Drew lawyered up, and his
attorney, Hanna Guild, advised him to say nothing.
Meanwhile, prosecution attorneys were questioning an
Emergency Medical Technician who had been first on
scene, and the CSI team members were questioning the
victim’s best friend who had waived her right to an
attorney.
The play will continue through evidence discovery,
suspect arrest, and a trial.
The exercise in logical thinking, combined with
writing daily summaries of their progress as part of
the investigative team, witnesses, and suspects is
the result of a grant-funded collaboration among
Esperanza Language Arts teacher Frank Perez, Health
Careers teacher Chad Holo, and ROP Medical Sciences
Academy teacher Valerie Easton. They
concocted the story with plenty of suspects,
grieving parents, a realistic crime scene and a very
clear physical evidence trail.
The Brea PD CSI team and chief detective spoke with
the students before the scene was set. They
revealed to them that the dispatcher who receives
the first call is often instrumental in catching the
perpetrators. They told them that emergency medical
personnel often destroy evidence unwittingly, and
add their own DNA to a scene. And they clued them in
with inside tips on what to look for at the
scene.
Whodunit? Was it the angry and jealous best
friend? Was it the boyfriend who claimed he was at
a Lakers’ game when it happened and only went to his
girlfriend’s apartment for dinner after the game?
Or was it a mysterious third party? Tune in next
week to see which class section of the Medical
Sciences Academy followed the evidence trail to its
logical conclusion.
We're VEXed!
Competition at the Cube is Intense
Ball dropping battle-bots built for endurance and
radio controlled by students with joysticks, vied
for first place at the official VEX competition May
8 at the Discovery Science Center. The object
of the contest was to fill several different sized
containers with as many balls as possible within a
limited amount of time, while keeping opponents away
from the targets. The two usual VEX heroes,
Ron Ponce and Steve Heck, who teach ROP
Project Lead the Way classes at Anaheim and
Western High Schools, respectively, kept score
despite the computerized system going down.
Each had a squad in the fourteen-team fray.
The Western High School team had robot failure, and
the Anaheim High School team made a valiant try.
Robert Kasai’s
daughter and
David Endo’s
grandson were the
youngest participants, and they just found out about
it two days before they entered.
Robert Kasai
teaches Legal and Law Enforcement Occupations at
Anaheim High School, and Dave Endo teaches
Automotive Technology and Introduction to
Engineering Design at Sonora High School and Auto at
La Habra High School as well.
Vital Link's, Kathy Johnson, organized the contest at
the Cube this year. Thanks to all who took time to
go and cheer on ROP’s intrepid staff and students,
including Western High School Principal, Sevillano and his daughter.
