Meeting Jan. 30th 2012

The main topic of discussion was the CPA conference coming up in Sacramento in Feb. Arrangements were made as to where we will meet and when we will leave. There will be 2 vans leaving, one will leave from Palmdale here at the school at 10:00 on Sunday the 12th. Another Van will be leaving from Lancaster, please contact Stockdale for that information. We need to meet the CPA members about the Clean Tech Academy grant from 5-7 PM in the Falor Room at the Sheraton Grand Hotel.

We talked about the need to get room 250 ready for the following:

Stockdale has been coordinating with test pilots from Edwards who are establishing a high school cooperative program for students to train with them virtually as pilots. The Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP) will provide us with software, yokes, pedals, mentors, and technical support for our students to "game" with actual test pilots through virtual connections to learn how to fly. As a carrot for the participating students they will sponsor our top 6-8 students to attend the SETP symposium in September at the Grand California Hotel (Disneyland) for 3 days (usually costs $600 per person). Expectations for us would be selecting appropriate interested students (plenty in the academy I'm sure), providing a participating teacher (also covered by academy), using site computers, and the potential sticking point- having our IT work with their technical person to allow the virtual connection with their mentor/pilots through the network/firewall.

This opportunity is really a special one as only select schools throughout the country were invited to participate and it really is complimentary that we were selected. This partnership could also lead to potentially other opportunities in the future as well. 

Mr. Stockdale will be putting on a BBQ for the academy students to reward them for good grades. Many of the Academy teachers are contributing food to this event, as well. After the students are done eating they can come play games in Mrs. Garmon's room, 250 for $1:00. The game day will be every Wednesday and it helps us raise money for the graduation stoles for our first graduation class.

We discussed student of the month for January and the results will be posted on Wednesday at the Digital Design and Engineering Academy website created by Sarah: http://ddeacademy.weebly.com/ Please make sure you check it out and congratulate the students. Many prizes were donated by the teachers as a reward to the students.