SLA Media

SLAMedia is a publication of the news for the Science Leadership Academy community. Writers come from the student body in 10th, 11th, and 12th grades. We work in unison to create a functioning paper with biweekly postings on a variety of events.

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A Guide to Backing up Computer Files

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By Marina Stuart

Staff Writer

At SLA, laptops are used as textbooks, resources, media outlets, and of course, a means of saving school files.  However, these computers are used more than five days a week, for seven months, occasionally they break, or crash, or something is lost. Almost every student has had something bad happen to their computer. It is times like these when it is a good idea to have your files backed up somehow.

As a Freshman, you would hear this advice given by the Tech Teacher Ms. Hull, and teachers in other classes. However,only about a third of students actually back up their files — and they often pay the price. SLAMedia wants you to know that backing up your files is essential, and there is more than one way to do it.

1. Use an external hard drive. An external hard drive is like a giant usb drive, that can hold lots of word documents, music, or movies. Many people use external hard drives as a way to store documents when their computer are too full and they won’t lose everything. Senior Maxime Damis uses an external hard drive and says “I decided to use a 500 GB external, because i found it online and it was portable so it made sharing documents so much easier.”

One problem with an external hard drive is that sometimes they also break and you could lose all your work again. This all could also be done with just a large USB drive.  In addition to the external hard drive, you can use time machine. Time machine is on every Mac computer. Every time you plug in your external hard drive, it automatically syncs all of your work to the hard drive without you doing anything.

2. Use Dropbox. Dropbox is a online area where you can store up to 2 GB of work, for free. It is a downloadable folder that you can save anything to, and can access online if your computer crashes. It is one of the most common ways that people save files at SLA. Many students and teachers use dropbox.

3. Invest in media. This is the simple, not so efficient but productive way of saving your work. Use the media (ex. Facebook, Google Docs, YouTube, Flickr) as a way to save your work in a place where you can access it from anywhere, and if your computer crashes at least it is somewhere. However, the downside is that it is all public and often you can edit it easily. Also, you need to have an internet connection at all times and some of the websites are not available in school.

These ways will help anyone avoid the horror of losing all their schoolwork when their computer crashes. Computer crashes can happen to anyone, even freshmen with their new computers, though most commonly to juniors and seniors, whose computers are very old and slow.

In summation, back up your work. It’s not that hard.

 

 

Parents Protest Budget Cuts with ‘Mock Bake Sale’

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Parents and students at rally outside City Hall

By Jenn Wright

Staff Writer

Members of City Council received a sweet surprise Thursday April 12th when parents of school district students hand delivered baked goods. Following, parents and students gathered at City Hall for a rally to talk about Governor Corbett’s $900 million education budget cuts.

Education Voters of Pennsylvania backed this “Not-a-real-bake-sale” with parents and the community who organized it. The message was, “There aren’t enough cookies in Pennsylvania.”

The two-part event began with the parents delivering cookies to the chambers of City Council with the intention of expressing dissatisfaction about the budget cuts.

Afterward, about sixty people gathered on the north side of City Hall for a brief rally.

People in attendance included Senator Vincent Hughes as well as Representative Eugene DePasquale.

“When someone says there’s not enough money in Harrisburg to fully fund public education,” Senator Hughes said, “they’re lying!”

“With a billion dollar gap, we can’t do it.” said Parent of two at Cook-Wissahickon, Rebecca Poyourow.

As a key organizer Poyourow gathered with parents from around Philly over the last month organizing the effort.

Parents who spoke expressed frustration about crowded classrooms, teaching layoffs and cuts to art, music and language classes.

Parent Sabra Townsend, whose child go to James Dobson Elementary, brought a flyer with her for an actual bake sale to support an after school math program at Dobson.

Not the first ‘Mock Bake Sale’ of its kind, similar types of event were held in Harrisburg and Shippensburg on Monday April 9th.

At the end of his speech Senator Hughes asked how much the cookies costed. Education Voters PA Executive Director Susan Gobreski answered, “How much do you wanna pay? 50 cents?”

Senator Hughes, after hearing the cookies were meant to be free, agreed, “Well, every little bit counts.”

Representative Jim Roebuck, the Democratic education chairman who is running again on April 24th, told the crowd that “You have my commitment as long as I am in Harrisburg.”

Contact Jenn Wright at jwright@scienceleadership.org

Capstone Plays Reflect SLA Community

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By Kristi Bezhani

Staff Writer

On March 16th, Senior Julia Boyer presented two plays which she wrote and directed for her Capstone project.  She coordinated the plays in a way where the audience could relate the idea of school, from the situations she created in the play.

The first play presented was “IHOP time,” Starring Seniors Anna Roman, Nadif Bracey, Andy Cowell. The was about a boy whose mom was driving him to church, while he wanted to be driven to IHOP instead. The conversations were made up of complaints from the child and demands from the mother, before and after the grandmother added in. This play was originally for the Philadelphia Young Playwrights competition which she wrote in tenth grade, when she was in Mr. Block’s class.

The second play was called “Office 309,” starring Seniors Josh Martin-Corrales, Marina Stuart, Jobe Naff, Natalie Sanchez, Tim Mamorl, Junior Sam Lovett-Perkins, and Freshman Maggie Hohenstein. This play was about a school counselor who was trying to better the lives of students, while coping with his own problems. This play was set in a counclers  school office, with one scene taking place in the fathers house of the school counselor. This play was written for her theatre class last year.

Both plays reflected the SLA community, although one more directly than the other. In “IHOP Time,” the mother told her child that, “Church is important, its tradition.” This showed that adults always emphasize the importance of school and it being mandatory. Later, the mother said, “I like the community. it’s really hard to find a church where everyone accepts you for who you are.” This sounded very much like SLA’s environment.

The grandmother character also showed the difference between generations. “When I was your age, they wouldn’t have this advanced technology.” This line, delivered by Andy Cowell dressed up as an old woman, made the audience giggle — and obviously spoke to students at SLA.

Nadif Bracey stole the show as the son, partially because of his funny lines — and also because he was much taller than his “mother.”

“Office 309” changed the mood with a more serious tone. The teacher character is flawed, and can’t help others because he cannot help himself. The audience was very sympathetic to Josh Martin-Corrales in this role, whose character had a stutter around adults, but not with his students. There were a lot of “awwwws” during the scenes with his father.

In the end, Boyer’s hard work and style payed off with a booming applause from the audience.

Home and School hosts Silent Auction

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By Jenn Wright

Staff Writer

Organized by SLA’s Home and School Association, the third annual Silent Auction raised money to support sports and academic interests of the school.

The auction happened on March 23, 2012 and was open to members of the SLA community ages 21 and older. This is the second year it was hosted at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Old City Philadelphia.

Items available for bidding included vacation homes, pieces by local artists and photography lessons from SLA’s own DigVid and History Teacher Douglas Herman.

Raffling off baskets full of goodies from Phillies tickets to Irish-themed fare, the support of attendees in buying auction items is vital to its success.

This year, attendance reached full capacity at 200 people, and the night included appetizers, a full buffet dinner, drinks, and dessert catered by the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

A highlight of the night was the live music by a group of SLA parents Ben Burenstein, Jay Klales, Music Teacher Ben Diamond, and Principal Intern Chad Mote called the RetroRockets. Principal Lehmann performed with the group, singing “Moondance.”

The ticket included access to the Chemical Heritage Museum exhibits as well as the use of docents to guide them.

SLA Counselor Zoe Siswick said, “it was a beautiful facility and it was a really great opportunity to view the exhibits during the evening.”

Parent and Silent Auction Chair Randi Kessler spoke to commitment of the SLA community to this event.

“Between this and EduCon, these are the two gigantic fundraisers that the outpouring of parent and faculty support is amazing.”

Senior Jeff Kessler was also a big part of the planning, working as a member of the Silent Auction committee making spreadsheets and using his organizational skills to advance the process of planning.

Taking the economy into account, the cost to host an event such as this has gone up substantially. This year, all donations were solicited or donated by parents in the SLA community. Fortunately, the Chemical Heritage Foundation worked with SLA on the price to host the event at their facility.

The proceeds from last year’s auction helped pay for this year’s music program, field trips, and other benefits to SLA.

Being one of the school’s largest fundraisers, Ms. Kessler noted that, “with the school budget cuts that have been really dramatic, we depend on the money from the auction even more.”