MPAO2 #15: ??We Are The Past or: Celebrating and Fearing our ...

Many Places At Once Volume 2, Issue #15, ???We Are The Past or: Celebrating and Fearing our Pre-adult Future Overlords?

Students with one of the may robot entries (photo by Josh Beech)

?Children are our future; I made that up, just now.

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? -Bob Odenkirk

Last Thursday (March 14, 2013), the South West Regional ACTE Fair took place at the Faulkner State Gym and Performing Arts Center in Bay Minette. ?As a student in their computer science program, I was afforded a front row seat as one of the judges. ?It was enlightening, enlivening, and only a little adorable (or maybe just a little bit more than a little bit).

ACTE stands for the Alabama Council for Technology in Education, and while Baldwin County doesn?t at first seem a fitting place from which so many talented and knowledgable children might emerge, there are a few factors that have made these children contenders at the state fair. ?Firstly, Baldwin County?s Digital Renaissance initiative has placed computers ?into the hands and households of every child in the county. ?Secondly, they?re the first generation to have grown up in a time when these devices were an omnipresence in their lives. ?Thirdly, though a far cry from Silicon Valley, the CEO of Apple is an Auburn graduate hailing from Robertsdale.

Once a year, and for the last twenty-nine years, the children of Baldwin County and its seven nearest neighboring counties in the southwestern area of Alabama are gathered to test their skills, ingenuity, and acumen in a number of categories. ?There?s the Literacy Test, a multiple choice exam on an array of topics like computer history, information technology, and networking. ?General Applications is a print-based test of software-assisted displays, such as digital artwork, presentations, digitally altered photographs, etc. ?Multimedia Projects are creative presentations including sound, photographs, video, original artwork? ?Hardware ? Robotics? ?Web Site Creation? Video Production? Computer Programming? ?The best and brightest children from third through twelfth grades gathered to test their hard work, imaginations, and technical prowess, to stunning and impressive results.

Dr. Charles Lake (the guy in the shirt and tie) among the throngs of hungry and hyper students (photo by Josh Beech)

I arrived at 8:30am to join the judges (mostly FSCC students, while the faculty provided Fair administration) and receive my assignment. ?I was paired with a Swedish student named Rebecca, and we were assigned to Level II Group Web Site Creation. ?Level II includes the fifth and sixth graders, which was exactly what I was hoping for. ?A programming student myself, I?m adequate, at best, and therefore was much more interested and qualified to review the work of the younger students out of curiosity about their informational and computer dexterity. ?While the students finished their Literacy tests, we drank coffee, surveyed the gym (which was already set up with rows of tables with spots designated for the numerous schools in attendance), and prepared for the gym to soon be filled to the brim with a humming throng of smarty kids.

So it began. ?We had a larger category, participation-wise, and found ourselves with a great variety of sensibilities, designs, and contents. ?My partner and I were at times underwhelmed (but polite, after all, we were the adults?), delighted, and astonished by the entries.

Two students from Robertsdale Middle School had a website that was simply all about horses; girls just obsessed with fuckin? horses. ?Horse facts, breeds, history, grooming. ?The design was super clean and informative. ?I was somewhat impressed, but the highly impressionable Swede alongside me must have apparently been a horse nut as well, and juked the scoring in their favor so that they ended up winning first place. ?Not my bag, and far from the greatest we saw, in my opinion, but they were sweet and infectious in their excitement for those goddamn horses. ?There were young ladies from St. Ignatius who put together a very savvy (and Lisa Frank-hued) business website to sell their hypothetical cupcakes and clothing. ?After giving us a website tour including a rundown of their products, ?designer? bios, and contact information, they handed us laminated business cards. ?It was irresistibly adorable. ?My favorites were these two boys from St. Ignatius who designed a run-down of their favorite warriors from throughout history: ?Romans, Knights, Ninjas, Spartans, etc. ?They had the statistics and had stacked them against one another on a leaderboard (Spartans were the greatest, obviously). ?Part of their web sources included the Deadliest Warrior wikia, a repository from the Spike TV testosterone-fest. ?On the score sheet, the first category, ??Most Unique? got crossed out and replaced with ?Most Awesome,? and I gave those little dudes a fucking 10.

Two fellow judges (and classmates) finish the final computer programming judgments. (photo by Josh Beech)

After we were finished judging, I was free from my part in the process, so I set about looking over some of the other categories and students. ?The Hardware ? Robotics kids were all pretty killer, making projects ranging from tiny RC forklifts to sensored mice that ran a maze on their own.

The multimedia kids were highly specialized in their interests, with projects ranging from kid-political (ex. ?Uniforms Are Bad And We Shouldn?t Have to Wear Them!?) to grown-up Fox News political (ex. ?Remember 9/11 and God Bless The USA,? a disturbing project once you realize it was created by someone who literally lived in the shadow of that great impasse their entire life).

(photo by Josh Beech)

My programming classmates were busy very harshly judging the high school computer programmers. ?They had some pithy shittalk for the majority of the entries they?d judged, save for one: ?a 15-year-old girl from St. Paul had designed and programmed a Sonic The Hedgehog typing tutorial game that blew their asses up. ?I went and checked it out and was equally impressed; her programming skills were already quite more sophisticated than my own (which isn?t really saying much other than the fact that I?m a college student).

Miss Crabtree (real name) and Mr. Charles ?Don?t Call me Doctor? Hoequist tabulate the final results (photo by Josh Beech)

I went outside during the lunch break and called my wife, who indicated that these kids were the people who I would be competing with for jobs in the next ten years. ?At 9, 12, 18 years old, they were already my competition, though I?d just finished judging them in my capacity as an ?adult.? ?Best not to dwell on that one; I?m not too far from graduation. ?Maybe my personality will win me points in this crowded field. ?Yes, children are our future, indeed, or rather we are their past.

After a lunch of pizzas, hot dogs, hamburgers and sodas, the auditorium building across from the gym was buzzing like a sports arena while the room packed with carbbed up children awaited their judgements. ?The award ceremony was a mad blur of winners presented by teacher and head of the south west fair Dr. Charles Lake, a man best and most diplomatically describe as very fucking active. ?One of the most hyper human beings on the planet, he was a perfect fit for handing out the few hundred awards to deserving and excited children.

By the end of it I was starting to fade; just being around that many highly hyper children at once is exhausting. ?Call it old age, enthusiasm fatigue, or a pizza induced coma, I left after the award ceremony dazed and delighted.

A packed-to-the-gills auditorium of children and teachers waiting for the fair results. (photo by Josh Beech)

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Josh Beech writes hard for the money. ?He also has a his own music review blog and an ongoing summer project over on his twitter page. ?Follow and love him.

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Source: http://modmobilian.com/2013/03/mpao2-15/

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