TEDxWCMephamHigh: Grey Matters

Remember when W.C. Mepham High School hosted their first ever TEDx? Hope so. It was just a little over a month ago. TEDxWCMephamHigh (the very first TEDx event at a public Long Island high school) showcased a variety of speakers. One of our many talented speakers, Alex Schmelkin, spoke about a matter very close to my heart (and my career as your librarian)... the grey area between right and wrong as it relates to technology. Take a look at the video below. These are certainly "ideas worth spreading."



About Alex:
Founder, Chief Executive Officer, Cake & Arrow
An impassioned digital leader who shares his insights with clients and the industry, Alex Schmelkin has been helping companies build their businesses online since 1994. As Co-Founder and CEO of New York-based customer experience agency Cake & Arrow, he's created an award-winning, results driven agency that is also a three-time recipient of Crain's Business and Advertising Age 'Best Places to Work' awards.

‘Post-truth’

According to Oxford Dictionaries, "After much discussion, debate, and research, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 is post-truth – an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’." You can read more about it here. 

From year's past Oxford's Word of the Year (US):
2015 -  ‘emoji’
2014 - vape
2013 - selfie
2012 - GIF (verb)
2011 - squeezed middle
2010 - refudiate
2009 - unfriend
2008 - hypermiling
2007 - locavore
2006 - carbon-neutral
2005 - podcast
2004 - chav

Literary Circle Book Club

Join us as we discuss Jon Krakauer's National Bestseller, Into the Wild, on Wednesday, December 14th at 2:30 pm in room 232. This is an ELITE event. Sign up by clinking on this link.

Mepham Gives Back

Thank you to all the students who attended yesterday's MakerSpace ELITE event, Crafting Holiday Cards in the library. The beautiful cards that you made will be distributed to the families at Mercy Haven, a non -sectarian, non-profit organization located in Islip Terrace that offers assistance to over 3,000 Long Islanders, approximately half of which are children. Mercy Haven’s mission is to acknowledge the dignity and potential of people who are homeless, living with mental illness, or living in poverty by providing housing, advocacy, education, and life skills development. Mercy Haven operates dozens of residences throughout Nassau and Suffolk Counties. For some, the housing is temporary. For others, it’s a permanent alternative to living on the streets.

Students in Ms. Geller's Leadership Class attend Mepham's MakerSpace event: Crafting Holiday Cards.

Thank you for crafting these beautiful cards. 

The CRAAP Test

When you search for information, you’re going to find lots of it… but is it good information? How can we tell if a source is a source that we would want to take information from? These are questions that our students are having trouble answering. According to this article from NPR reporter, Camila Domonoske, states that "if the children are the future, the future might be very ill-informed." This article by the Huffington Post, states that, "what we have now is not only uninformed but misinformed masses."

In light of all the misleading, biased, and plain wrong information that is out there on the Internet, we need a way to decipher which information is reliable. Thanks to a BMCHSD curriculum writing project from the summer of 2015, we have resources to help us. In comes, the CRAAP test - a clever acronym and a framework for evaluating online resources. See info-graphic below.

Created by Maddie Clybourn

When we do research, websites are useful because they provide easy access to information. However, not all websites are reliable. In order to check for reliability, we must consider, currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose. Otherwise, we might be misinformed.

The video below was curated by our Principal, Mr. Harrington, and shown at a recent faculty meeting. It demonstrates the consequences when we do not use the CRAAP test!

MakerSpace presents... Crafting Holiday Cards

Flyer created at Canva.com

Join us in the school library on Monday, December 12th at 2;15 p.m. in our MakerSpace to craft holiday cards for Mercy Haven’s network of families. Mercy Haven is a non-sectarian, non-profit organization located in Islip Terrace that offers assistance to over 3,000 Long Islanders, approximately half of which are children. Mercy Haven’s mission is to acknowledge the dignity and potential of people who are homeless, living with mental illness, or living in poverty by providing housing, advocacy, education, and life skills development. All craft supplies will be provided. This is an ELITE event. Sign up by clicking here.