Podcast Central

Dr. Tyson began the Pythagorean Award at Mabry during the 2002 - 2003 school year to recognize the highest math achievement at our school. The trophy itself, pictured to the left, is an original work commissioned by the renouned Hans Gobo Fräbel studios. The giant "greater than" mathematical symbol reads, "Math Achievement: We're greater than!" and holds the name of each year's winner. Our math students in 8th grade are invited to come to school early to take a very difficult math test. The top three winning students then compete in front of their entire 8th grade class solving math problems based on time and accuracy. The winning student receives a Pythagorean Award Plaque and this highest math honor at Mabry. Additionally, we host this podcast, which you can view in your browser window, of the three bright young finalists in the 2007 competition: Emily, Eli, and Conrad. The winner of the 2007 Pythagorean Award is Conrad. Congratulations! Emily Eli Conrad

Earlier in the year I was delighted when Mica's parents shared with me that she was selected to be a Page for State Senator Chip Rogers! In this podcast Mica and I talk about this experience, how she was selected, what her goals and aspirations are, and what this experience meant to her. You will not want to miss getting to know this wonderful Mabry student who has a very bright future ahead of her! You can watch this podcast in your browser window by clicking on this link, or you can download it to your computer (and for your video iPod) by clicking on the image below.

Three years ago Cobb County School District began an annual recognition program for the Professional of the Year in which each school staff elected a staff member in a non-certified position for special recognition. We wanted to do something special for these three employees, elected over the last three years, to honor their service to our school. Therefore, we created this podcast to highlight their contributions to Mabry Middle School. You may watch the podcast in your browser by simply clicking on this link.

In this podcast Dr. Tyson celebrates some of the many achievements of the students, parents, and staff at Mabry Middle School over the past 6 years. He announces the new principal that will begin working at Mabry on July 1st. You may watch the podcast in your browser by simply clicking on this link.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to the 6th Annual Mabry Film Festival. We begin our evening extravaganza with students from the Mabry Orchestra performing Celtic Fiddle Tune. Please welcome our Celtic Fiddlers! Orchestra performs: “Celtic Fiddle Tune” In May of 2001 Mabry Middle School held our first Film Festival. We did something really new: All of our movies were produced on the computer. At that time we did not realize that this simple idea, to have students and teachers use more technology in class, would lead Mabry Middle School to set the standard for technology innovation in public schools. As a result of this plan, last year Mabry was awarded Scholastic and Intel Corporation’s prestigious School of Distinction Award for Technology Innovation, an award that brought over a quarter million dollars worth of technology to our school. Amazingly, by leveraging connectivity through the iTunes store and MabryOnline.org’s Podcast Central, our students’ and teachers’ work has been seen all over the world. Our website has served up over 300 gigabytes of data to users the world over. And this figure does not include a single digital media file! We have actually received emails from every continent on earth. And hundreds of visitors from all over the United States as well as the United Kingdom, the Republic of Georgia (the former Soviet Union), and Australia have come to Mabry to see how we accomplish the amazing work we do with digital media. Tonight we have the privilege and the pleasure to present to you the 6th Annual Mabry Middle School Film Festival. Tonight we celebrate our theme: “Making Our World a Better Place.” Best Teaching & Learning Our first category for the evening is Best Teaching and Learning. The objective for these movies was to create a movie that would be the best representation of curricular significance. The nominees are: • Clase de Español • Immigration Past and Present • Who Is An American • Who Lives and Who Dies

I am not sure that people realize what a distinguished panel of judges we have used over the years, people who work in the communications and media industry in television, cable, and film, as well as people in technology, education, and even the state department of education. During the judging this year, one of the judges asked “How do your students and teachers do it? They just get better and better when I think they can’t get any better!” The movies in our next category, the Documentary, were to strive to be the best presentation of political, social, or historical subject matter in a factual and informative manner. The nominees for Best Documentary are: • Adoption • Frankengenes • Is It You? • Living Hope • Nothing But Nets • Through Technology 6th Graders Can Change the World

This next category is absolutely the most difficult one for our students to master. The sound in a movie shapes the whole emotional tone of the movie’s content. The sound can make a great idea even more powerful. But while it is so powerful, it is very hard to get clean sound without a lot of noise. The nominees in this category did an excellent job of using sound, sound levels, and sound elements (music choice, sound effects, voiceover, dialogue and mixing) to powerfully convey the message of the movie. The nominees for Best Sound are: • Decisions • Frankengenes • Girls Got Game • Immigration Past and Present • Music Our Bond • Nothing But Nets • Who Lives and Who Dies

The movie-makers in the Best Editing category did an excellent job of putting together all of the elements of the movie to create the finished product. They accomplished the difficult task of making it all come together in a way that goes beyond just making sense to telling a compelling story. Many times this includes adding still pictures, special sound editing, special effects, titles and transitions in addition to importing their footage. Editing on the computer requires skill and patience. And the nominees are: • Do You Have Religious Freedom • Frankengenes • Girls Got Game • Music Our Bond • Nothing But Nets • Who Lives and Who Dies

The screenplay is the story. Each movie has no more than 2 minutes to make a compelling point. If you don’t think writing a short screenplay is difficult, you just haven’t tried it before. The screenplay has to sell the concept, the one main point of the movie, to the audience. It requires extensive research, writing, editing, rewriting, and group collaboration. The nominees for Best Screenplay are: • Adoption • Immigration Past and Present • Frankengenes • Nothing But Nets • Through Technology 6th Graders Can Change the World • Who Lives and Who Dies

The movie-makers in the Best Cinematography category did an excellent job with the overall visual impact of their film: lighting, composition and camera angles, photography, and framing. They did an exceptional job of making sure that the visual information in their movie told their story well. This year, Dr. Tyson challenged us to shoot our own footage and not rely so much on still images found on the internet. Perhaps as a result, more than any previous year, more of our movies include some really great footage that was actually shot by our students. Some movies even incorporated footage from the operating room at Emory University and footage shot in South America specifically for their movie. Our students used interesting visuals, camera angles, and made their footage look very professional. And the nominees are: • Communication with Technology • Decisions • Do You Have Religious Freedom • Frankengenes • Music Our Common Bond • Through Technology 6th Graders Can Change the World

Special Recognition We would like to take just a moment tonight to celebrate the theme for our film festival this year: Making Our World a Better Place. This year we wanted to take what we learn in our classes and use that to make our world better. Making the movies to show you tonight is a tremendous amount of very hard work. Making these movies make a difference is even more challenging. Taking what we have learned in school to the big screen in the hope that it will cause everyone in our audience to help us all make our world a better place is what this festival is all about! It takes very special people with very special gifts to be able to go from an idea to a real finished product. For the past five years, we have been privileged to enjoy a very special collaboration with a real genius, an actual director and producer in the commercial film industry who has done just that: guided us in taking our ideas to the bring screen, turning them into the finished products that you see tonight. His genius is his amazing ability to help each team of students shape their ideas, to focus on making one compelling point as powerfully as we can possibly make it. He gives each team of students his professional advice, which we can choose to take or not. Each movie team gets to spend about 20 minutes with him 6 times throughout the course of our 5 month project. So not only is he a genius, but he is also amazingly generous with his time. Dr. Tyson says that Mr. Ciralante is not a person; he’s an energy field. He takes time out from his busy production schedule to freely give his professional guidance to the students of Mabry to help us make our world a better place. We will present a small token of our appreciation, a $50 gift certificate to the iTunes store for him or his son. While Mr. Ciralante could not be with us tonight, we wanted to publically say, “Thank you, Mr. Ciralante.” iPod Awards The iPod is such a powerful media player device. I love mine! I love listening to all of my music on it. But when Apple announced the video iPod, it got even more outrageously cool! Dr. Tyson will place all of the movies in each category of the Film Festival on our website in Podcast Central. That means, that in the next few days, anyone in the world will be able to download the movies you have seen tonight from the iTunes Store or from MabryOnline’s Podcast Central! To think that every movie seen tonight will be in global distribution–that’s just amazing! Anyone, anywhere in the world can watch our movies on their computer and can even download them onto their video iPods. NAM: So tomorrow morning someone riding on the Tube in London might be watching our movies! That’s just way cool! And because of the generosity of Apple Incorporated, who is donating 3, 80 gigabyte video iPods to Mabry Middle School, three Mabry students are about to win a state of the art video iPod. So they will be able to download all of our movies, including their own, onto their new video iPod! The judges selected three movies they thought should receive the iPods. The students on each team then selected which student would win the iPod if their movie was selected by the judges. Best Picture Category The most coveted category award is winning the Best Picture Category. The criteria for this category is to combine all of the elements of the movie to bring a powerful emotional impact that convincingly conveys a significant message, leaving a lasting impression. But before we announce the winner for the Best Picture category, we will not only watch each of the movies that have been nominated for this coveted category, we will hear some very brief comments from each team about the movie they made. You will hear that each team of students gives great thought and care to the product they produce. They sincerely want to make our world a better place. Final Award And we have one final award made possible by the generous sponsorship of a very prestigious organization. The International Society for Technology in Education, commonly referred to as ISTE, hosts an annual international technology conference attended by over 20,000 educators from around the world. That conference, the National Educational Computing Conference, is actually being held here in Atlanta this summer, and the closing keynote presentation will be Dr. Tyson and selected Mabry students talking about this very film festival you are attending tonight. That’s an incredible honor that recognizes our students’ exemplary work. Leslie Connery, Deputy CEO and Conference Chair for ISTE has called our film festival “a national treasure” and wants educators the world over to know about it. ISTE has therefore chosen to be one of our Mabry Movie Academy sponsors and has donated an Apple MacBook and a Mini Digital Video Camera to be awarded to a single student tonight. For this unbelievable award, the judges could select any movie from all of the movies submitted in the film festival to receive this amazing gift. Each team had to select the one student on their team that would win the computer and digital video camera should their movie be selected by the judges. Conclusion The Mabry Film Festival is an incredible event that has earned our school prestigious international recognition. We hope that our movies tonight have challenged you to make our world a better place. It sounds like such a difficult thing to do. But it’s really fairly easy. Simply be nice to the people around you. Help others. Go that extra step to attain your personal best. Several of our movie teams wish to solicit donations from you tonight, including your bodies organs! We encourage you to stop by their tables, or take their fliers, as you leave and consider how you can help them attain their goal to make our world a better place. It has been our pleasure to be your hosts this evening. Thank you for coming, and goodnight.

Our 7th grade students spent last week on a science expedition on Jekyll Island, exploring the marine habit and ecosystems. Not only did they have a tremendous amount of fun, but they attended classes in the field, studying: The Slouth The Maritime Forest The Beach The Marsh The Dock Herpetology Endangered Species The depth of understanding acquired by our students by seeing, feeling, and holding first hand is difficult to match. Be sure to visit the Jekyll Island, 2007 blog at the Mabry Global Learning Collaborative. You will find hundreds and hundreds of pictures of the students in their classes. While on the island, student created short video podcasts of their experiences. This podcast highlights the marsh. You can download it to your computer (for your video iPod) by clicking on the picture below, or you can watch it in your browser window by clicking on this link.

Our 7th grade students spent last week on a science expedition on Jekyll Island, exploring the marine habit and ecosystems. Not only did they have a tremendous amount of fun, but they attended classes in the field, studying: The Slouth The Maritime Forest The Beach The Marsh The Dock Herpetology Endangered Species The depth of understanding acquired by our students by seeing, feeling, and holding first hand is difficult to match. Be sure to visit the Jekyll Island, 2007 blog at the Mabry Global Learning Collaborative. You will find hundreds and hundreds of pictures of the students in their classes. While on the island, student created short video podcasts of their experiences. This podcast highlights the beach. You can download it to your computer (for your video iPod) by clicking on the picture below, or you can watch it in your browser window by clicking on this link.

Our 7th grade students spent last week on a science expedition on Jekyll Island, exploring the marine habit and ecosystems. Not only did they have a tremendous amount of fun, but they attended classes in the field, studying: The Slouth The Maritime Forest The Beach The Marsh The Dock Herpetology Endangered Species The depth of understanding acquired by our students by seeing, feeling, and holding first hand is difficult to match. Be sure to visit the Jekyll Island, 2007 blog at the Mabry Global Learning Collaborative. You will find hundreds and hundreds of pictures of the students in their classes. While on the island, student created short video podcasts of their experiences. This podcast highlights the maritime forest, also known as Boneyard Beach. You can download it to your computer (for your video iPod) by clicking on the picture below, or you can watch it in your browser window by clicking on this link.

The Mabry Middle and Lassiter High School Orchestras recently had the opportunity to perform with the internationally-renowned Barrage! This multi-talented string ensemble performs an eclectic repertoire (music, song, and dance) of high-octane, energy-fueled music from varied genre, including jazz, folk, and contemporary world music designed to inspire string students the world over to practice and enjoy stringed music on steroids. 11Alive featured a news story on the Barrage performance and their joint performance with our students. 11Alive graciously granted permission for us to post two podcasts on our website: their news story about the event, and our students' performance with Barrage! Enjoy! This podcast is the 11Alive News story about the event. If you wish to watch the podcast in your browser, you may do so at this link. To download the podcast to your computer so you can put it on your video iPod, simply click on the picture below.

The Mabry Middle and Lassiter High School Orchestras recently had the opportunity to perform with the internationally-renowned Barrage! This multi-talented string ensemble performs an eclectic repertoire (music, song, and dance) of high-octane, energy-fueled music from varied genre, including jazz, folk, and contemporary world music designed to inspire string students the world over to practice and enjoy stringed music on steroids. 11Alive featured a news story on the Barrage performance and their joint performance with our students. 11Alive graciously granted permission for us to post two podcasts on our website: their news story about the event, and our students' performance with Barrage! Enjoy! This podcast features the Mabry Orchestra performing with Barrage. If you wish to watch the podcast in your browser, you may do so at this link. To download the podcast to your computer so you can put it on your video iPod, simply click on the picture below.

Our 7th grade students spent last week on a science expedition on Jekyll Island, exploring the marine habit and ecosystems. Not only did they have a tremendous amount of fun, but they attended classes in the field, studying: The Slouth The Maritime Forest The Beach The Marsh The Dock Herpetology Endangered Species The depth of understanding acquired by our students by seeing, feeling, and holding first hand is difficult to match. Be sure to visit the Jekyll Island, 2007 blog at the Mabry Global Learning Collaborative. You will find hundreds and hundreds of pictures of the students in their classes. While on the island, student created short video podcasts of their experiences. This first podcast highlights the slough. You can download it to your computer (for your video iPod) by clicking on the picture below, or you can watch it in your browser window by clicking on this link.

Our 7th grade students spent last week on a science expedition on Jekyll Island, exploring the marine habit and ecosystems. Not only did they have a tremendous amount of fun, but they attended classes in the field, studying: The Slouth The Maritime Forest The Beach The Marsh The Dock Herpetology Endangered Species The depth of understanding acquired by our students by seeing, feeling, and holding first hand is difficult to match. Be sure to visit the Jekyll Island, 2007 blog at the Mabry Global Learning Collaborative. You will find hundreds and hundreds of pictures of the students in their classes. While on the island, student created short video podcasts of their experiences. This podcast highlights dock studies. You can download it to your computer (for your video iPod) by clicking on the picture below, or you can watch it in your browser window by clicking on this link.

Our 7th grade students spent last week on a science expedition on Jekyll Island, exploring the marine habit and ecosystems. Not only did they have a tremendous amount of fun, but they attended classes in the field, studying: The Slouth The Maritime Forest The Beach The Marsh The Dock Herpetology Endangered Species The depth of understanding acquired by our students by seeing, feeling, and holding first hand is difficult to match. Be sure to visit the Jekyll Island, 2007 blog at the Mabry Global Learning Collaborative. You will find hundreds and hundreds of pictures of the students in their classes. While on the island, student created short video podcasts of their experiences. This podcast highlights reptiles and amphibians. You can download it to your computer (for your video iPod) by clicking on the picture below, or you can watch it in your browser window by clicking on this link.

The Mabry Middle School Band was invited to audition for The Midwest Clinic, an international band and orchestra conference which is certainly one of the most prestigious school music honors in the United States. Performance at the conference is by invitation only. Our band students and teachers work very hard and are among the very best middle school bands in the country. Congratulations to them for earning this distinguished honor. This first podcast from their recent recording session is a recording of their performance of Among the Clouds. These podcasts are among the recordings included in their audition package. To listen to each podcast in your browser, simply click on each link. Congratulations students and teachers. We are very proud of you!

The Mabry Middle School Band was invited to audition for The Midwest Clinic, an international band and orchestra conference which is certainly one of the most prestigious school music honors in the United States. Performance at the conference is by invitation only. Our band students and teachers work very hard and are among the very best middle school bands in the country. Congratulations to them for earning this distinguished honor. This second podcast from their recent recording session is a recording of their performance of Miss Liberty. These podcasts are among the recordings included in their audition package. To listen to each podcast in your browser, simply click on each link. Congratulations students and teachers. We are very proud of you!

Recently I visited one of our feeder elementary schools, Davis Elementary, who was just named a Georgia School of Excellence. I was delighted to have the opportunity to be on their campus as this exciting honor was announced to their students, staff, and community. While on the campus, I was incredibly impressed with the level of technology integration in their curriculum--even in the kindergarten classes! I asked Davis' principal, Mrs. Brink, if I could return with a middle school film crew to create a podcast of the amazing work these teachers and children are doing as they prepare for Mabry Middle School. This podcast is the product of that visit. Special thanks to Rebecca, Grant, and Chandler, the three Mabry students who filmed and edited this project.

On February 1, 2007, Mabry Middle School was honored to welcome our State Superintendent of Schools, Cathy Cox, with guests from the British Council, including the Director of Bilateral Programmes, Rosalind Morton, as well members of the Georgia State Department of Education. Cobb County School District Superintended, Fred Sanderson, and Area 4 Assistant Superintendent, Lynda Martin, also joined us for a presentation of ways Mabry Middle School leverages meaningfulness and significance through technology implementation in our classes. This podcast features a short greeting from Cathy Cox and Rosalind Morton as well as their impressions of their visit to our school.

Our seventh grade Life Science students have learned about transgenics: the process of extracting genetic material from one organism and inserting it into another. In this podcast they clearly describe the scientific process of this experiment in which they extracted a DNA plasmid from a jellyfish and inserted it into the DNA of a bacteria. They grew this new microorganism in the lab, designing a new species of bacteria which manufactures a protein that fluoresces under UV light, indicating that the new DNA had been successfully inserted into the DNA of the bacteria. Our students are getting an authentic look at how genetic scientists are using new technologies to create treatments (and hopefully someday even cures) for diseases such as diabetes, hemophilia, and sickle cell anemia to name a few. Did you learn this in your 7th grade science curriculum?!

Seventh grade Life Science students have been busy studying body systems and anatomy. This podcast by Mrs. Larkin and her students shows her students highly engaged in learning.

Students in Mrs. Kaplan's 8th grade Language Arts class studied a collection of works by Edgar Allan Poe. In this studentpodcast, Thomas' opening sentence sums up the quality of this student project: "Welcome to Mrs. Kaplan's class' literary theatre..." And theatre it is! We post this podcast now as a celebration of the author's birthday, which happens to be in just 2 days: Friday, January 19, 1809. Student producers: Collin and Kyle Student readers: Kaitlyn, Jillian, Kristen, Kyle, and Vance Student Narrator: Thomas

Mrs. Miceli is one of Mabry's sixth grade Social Studies teachers. Her sister and her husband (Karen & Paul Whitley) are missionaries who work in Peru. They have actively been working to raise funds to help build an orphanage in San Francisco, Peru. Before they left for their most recent trip back to Peru, Mrs. Whitley asked Mrs. Miceli if her classes would like to collect crayons and coloring books for the orphans, which are of Incan decent. As Mabry 6th grade students will be studying about Peru and the Incans, Mrs. Miceli thought this would be a great project for her students to accept, giving her students a firsthand experience with the people of Peru. Mrs. Miceli is so proud of her students. Their response was wonderful. They got to make a direct contribution to the people in a country they will study. And, for them to give up their Halloween candy for the orphans was an added bonus. This podcast features several Mabry students' reflections on what they saw and learned as a result of their contribution. You can also learn more about this project at this link at the Mabry Global Learning Collaborative.

Mabry 7th grade Language Arts teachers sponsor a book chat in which students and parents read the same books and then enjoy being in class together experiencing a variety of activities based on their reading. During the book chat "coffee house" parents and students complete a guided discussion about the book they have read and even get to meet the author personally, ask him questions, and just savor reading and learning. This podcast features author Brett Hodus talking about his day at Mabry and the writing process. You will hear from Mabry's 7th grade Language Arts teachers and see pictures taken during the event.

My Howard's students completed this clever little 1 minute enhanced podcast about Mabry Middle School. Enjoy!

Our science students in 7th grade will be taking their annual science expedition to Jekyll Island once again this year. This podcast is a quick preview of last year's event. You can also check out last year's Jekyll, 2006, blog for other podcasts and hundreds of photos from the expedition.

Dr. Tyson is traveling to Japan as a guest of the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund. As part of his 19 day itinerary, he will be visiting many places: Tokyo, Fukuoka, Arao, and Tamana to name a few. He will visit several schools in Arao in the Kumamoto Prefecture, learning about the culture and educational system of Japan, and sharing his travels with his 7th grade students here at Mabry (as well as students all over the world) who study this country. We look forward to exchanging information between our schools and countries. This podcast introduces this project.

Seventh grade Life Science @ Mabry continues to rock...or, um... egg. As a part of this major unit on cells, students were learning about cellular transportation through osmosis and diffusion. The students used eggs to parallel or model an animal cell. For 6 days they added solutions of varying water concentrations to observe the effects on the eggs' mass and circumference. The eggs could lose or gain mass based on the properties of the solution in which they soaked.Take just a few minutes to sense the eggcitement of learning in science!

We have created this video podcast of Mabry's CRCT scores from May, 2006. Sometimes data can be confusing, so here is a simple way to understand what you're about to see: We want more purple and no yellow. Each bar graph shows the percentage of students below grade level (yellow), on grade level and meeting expectations (blue), and above grade level and exceeding expectations (purple). The first chart in each data set shows an overview of that grade level's performance in each subject. The next several charts show how our students compared to the students in Cobb County as a whole and the state of Georgia in each subject area. You will notice that, in some subject areas, the data looks significantly different than it has in the past. These tests were renormed last year. For a more detailed explanation of the data, you can visit these two posts as MabryOnline: CRCT Data from May, 2006, Posted and Student Achievement Data from May, 2006. If the data goes by too fast for you, simply click the Pause button.

At the beginning of each school year Mabry welcomes parents to an Open House meeting. The meeting begins with a general session to introduce the PTSA and in which Dr. Tyson speaks about Mabry's direction and mission. Parents then start with their child's homeroom and actually attend each of their student's classes, meeting the teachers and getting a sense for what a day in the life of their child at Mabry is like. Before the Open House meeting began, this presentation, Did You Know, was showing. We have turned it into a podcast. The presentation provides an overview of our Mabry resources and juxtaposes those resources against a backdrop of the global challenges we face.

At the beginning of each school year Mabry welcomes parents to an Open House meeting. The meeting begins with a general session to introduce the PTSA and in which Dr. Tyson speaks about Mabry's direction and mission. Parents then start with their child's homeroom and actually attend each of their student's classes, meeting the teachers and getting a sense for what a day in the life of their child at Mabry is like. This is a podcast of Dr. Tyson's Open House presentation--which he did on the interactive whiteboard. The presentation introduced the parents to how this technology can be used in the classroom with students and also provided Mabry with survey information to facilitate our future planning. Additionally he spoke of Mabry's mission statement and the role parents play in helping us continue our school's rich tradition of academic excellence.

At the beginning of each school year Mabry welcomes parents to an Open House meeting. The meeting begins with a general session to introduce the PTSA and in which Dr. Tyson speaks about Mabry's direction and mission. Parents then start with their child's homeroom and actually attend each of their student's classes, meeting the teachers and getting a sense for what a day in the life of their child at Mabry is like. In this podcast you will see the results from the ACTIVote survey from the Open House general meeting conducted by Dr. Tyson. Not only can teachers gain this type of insight from using this technology with their students in class, but, unlike the anonymous surveying done in our meeting, they can also gain immediate assessment data from each individual student in their classes. After the meeting, a parent asked if Mabry accepted donations or corporate sponsorships to increase the availability of this technology for our students. Yes, absolutely. We want this type of technology to be used pervasively by students and teachers. Our long term goal, which regrettably is probably several years out, is to substantially reduce the amount of time teachers spend with clerical tasks (grading papers) and give them that time to do more data analysis (analyzing daily assessment data for students). Simplistically put, we want this technology to allow the student to take a classroom assessment and have that data appear in virtually real time on iParent.

Mrs. Larkin and her students made this video podcast to show us all of the engaging learning experiences they had with their unit on microscopes.

Gummy Bears were used in 7th grade Life Science to teach students the scientific method. This video podcast by Mrs. Kulkarni and her students is an overview of the lesson, procedures, vocabulary, and knowledge Mrs. Kulkarni's students learned.

Mrs. Glenn's 7th grade G.I.A. (Glenn's Intelligence Agency) agents begin their global investigations. Learn about what 7th grade social studies is up to @ Mabry.

Mrs. Larkin's 7th grade science students learn about the scientific method through an experiment with Gummy Bears. Learn all about the scientific method and their findings.

At the beginning of each year Dr. Tyson meets with all of our Mabry students to review important school rules and routines as well as to challenge our students to do their very best work. In this video podcast, he talks with Mabry students about character, persistence, commitment, kindness, and other important aspirations. If you are new to Mabry, you will certainly want to listen carefully to his hope for your future.

This video podcast from our chorus teacher, Mrs. Smith, showcases her students' work last year with the musical production Cinderella.

Ms. Larkin, one of our 7th grade Life Science teachers, put together an excellent video podcast overview of the Inquiry-based Life Science program at Mabry Middle School. As our 7th grade science teachers participate deeply in collaboration, we decided to share this with the whole Mabry family.

The Mabry Middle School Symphony Orchestra received a special invitation to perform for the 2006 Georgia Music Educators' Association Conference in Savannah. For this performance, a new work was commissioned for our symphony, The Star of Valor, by composer Doug Spata. In this excellent video podcast, you can listen to our symphony perform this wonderful work. Visit Mr. Doemel's blog at MabryOnline.org.I am very proud of our Mabry music programs and firmly believe they are surpassed by none in the United States!

This podcast by our orchestra director, Mr. Chris Doemel, is an excellent overview of the orchestra program at Mabry Middle School. He provides a comprehensive overview of the program that will answer our most frequently asked questions. I invite all of our rising 6th grade students and parents to listen carefully to this wonderfully executed podcast!

We have such incredible students at Mabry Middle School. In fact, I believe they are the leaders of tomorrow. Each brings a unique set of skills and attributes into which we at Mabry want to instill maximum capacity for leadership. This category in Podcast Central, Kid Capacity, is a collection of interviews with Mabry students that gives voice to the leaders of tomorrow, today. It's been a while since we have had a podcast in Kid Capacity. This podcast features one of our 6th grade students, Raphaella. Her parents provided me with a quicktime movie of her on the ice; so, I was able to make this into a video podcast. Raphaella talks about time management, her skating ambitions, and what skating means in her life. We also get to see her skills on the ice. Enjoy listening to one of our outstanding students at Mabry.

The French classes did a class project: La Famille (the family). In this podcast, Chanel describes her family in pictures, writing, and with the podcast, orally. The project was first created as an iPhoto album, converted into a movie, and, finally, developed into a video podcast in which you hear Chanel introduce you to her family. Enjoy!

Georgia state law requires each middle school student reads 25 books each year. The majority of our Mabry students greatly exceed that goal. Hundreds read over 50 books, and many students even came close to 300 books read and documented in 1 year! This podcast features the top reader in each grade level. Of these three students, the one (Katherine, 8th grade) with the highest number of books read and correctly documented on the Mabry reading logs received an iPod Nano. The second highest (Wade, 6th grade) received a 240 song Shuffle. And the third highest (Chelsea, 7th grade) received a 120 song Shuffle. Listen to these students talk about their reading, their favorite books and authors, and how to pick interesting books. (Katherine, Wade, and Chelsea)

On May 3rd, in Podcast Central, I published Mission Possible. Our objective was to award an iPod Nano to the student whose essay, designed to help students excel at Mabry next year, was the best. The contest was so close we just had to have three winners! An iPod Nano was awarded to Katie (pictured). Two students, Gretchen and Kyle, tied for second place just just one point less than Katie! This podcast, by Katie, is the first in the series, Mission Possible, from our three winners. Students and parents both, listen carefully to Katie's excellent advice on how to achieve our school goal. If you follow her advice, I guarantee you will have even greater success at Mabry! We are making each of these mp3 podcasts so the students can actually download themselves into their new iPods! Congratulations to all of the students who participated. Everyone submitted excellent entries!

On May 3rd, in Podcast Central, I published Mission Possible. Our objective was to award an iPod Nano to the student whose essay, designed to help students excel at Mabry next year, was the best. The contest was so close we just had to have three winners! An iPod Nano was awarded to Katie. Two students, Gretchen and Kyle (pictured), tied for second place, each with just one point less than Katie! This podcast, by Kyle, is the third in the series, Mission Possible, from our three winners. Students and parents both, listen carefully to Kyle's description of our school programs and his excellent advice on how to achieve our school goal. If you follow his advice, I guarantee you will have even greater success at Mabry! We are making each of these mp3 podcasts so the students can actually download themselves into their new iPods! Congratulations to all of the students who participated. Everyone submitted excellent entries!

On May 3rd, in Podcast Central, I published Mission Possible. Our objective was to award an iPod Nano to the student whose essay, designed to help students excel at Mabry next year, was the best. The contest was so close we just had to have three winners! An iPod Nano was awarded to Katie. Two students, Gretchen (pictured) and Kyle, tied for second place, each with just one point less than Katie! This podcast, by Gretchen, is the second in the series, Mission Possible, from our three winners. Students and parents both, listen carefully to Gretchen's excellent advice on how to achieve our school goal while maintaining active involvement in sports. If you follow her advice, I guarantee you will have even greater success at Mabry! We are making each of these mp3 podcasts so the students can actually download themselves into their new iPods! Congratulations to all of the students who participated. Everyone submitted excellent entries!