MAKING HEADLINES
C ARLYN TON S CH OOL DI STR IC T NE WS
arlynton-Montour
Freshman Jaimee Cabili was
named the 2016 winner of the
Allegheny County American Legion
essay contest. Jaimee’s essay cited the
benefits of the GI Bill while addressing
the question, “How does our government
keep Lincoln’s promise to our veterans.”
The American Legion administers the
contest locally and nationally to give
middle and high school students an
opportunity to showcase their talents
and abilities in English through the use of
originality and accuracy in research. The
Legion also hopes the contest will make
teens aware of the responsibilities and
duties of a good citizen.
Thanks to the diligence of
elementary librarian Jill Rishell,
Carnegie and Crafton elementary
schools became Common Sense Digital
Citizenship Certified Schools for the new
school year. As Common Sense schools,
students will be better prepared to
navigate the challenges that technology
brings to the classroom. They will also
learn tools to gain digital citizenship
through a variety of online resources
designed to define the manner in which
students interact with technology.
Through Common Sense programs,
student will be schooled in Internet safety,
cyberbullying and digital footprinting.
Junior Jonah Schriver
participated in the Software
Engineering Institute’s High School
Cyber Security Competition at Carnegie
Mellon University this past summer.
During the workshop, Jonah and other
high school students across the region
learned about the dangers lurking in
cyber space including identity theft,
social engineering attacks, malware
and ransomware. Focusing on methods
hackers use to manipulate physical
objects in personal computers, homes and
utilities, the program
gave participants
hands-on experience
to harden and protect
computer systems
using state-of-the-art
52 Carlynton-Montour
High school students
Stephanie Bonifield,
Manny Corral-Hays, Elana
Heffner, Issac Heffner,
Zavier Helbig, Liam
Gleason, Basem Majed
and Marco Moorby, and
teachers Bill Harris and
Michael Kozy represented
Carlynton at the Allegheny
Intermediate Unit STEAM
Showcase in September.
Senior Stephanie Bonifield and seventh grader Issac
As an awardee of a STEAM
Heffner prepare Marvin, a robotic dog, for the AIU
STEAM Showcase.
grant last year, students
demonstrated how science,
technology, engineering,
the arts and mathematics
have redefined what
they are learning in the
classroom. Carlynton
students featured several
robots at the showcase
including a robotic golden
retriever named Marvin.
Marvin, made entirely
of cardboard and duct
tape and painted a bright
Preparing a Dragon robot for a demonstration, freshmen
yellow, was quite the
Basam Majed and Zavier Helbig make some minor
attention-getter as he
adjustments.
interacted with people
by barking, wagging its tail or shaking hands with its paw. The dog’s actions are
controlled by a Birdbrain Technologies Hummingbird duo microcontroller. He was
recently designed, constructed and programmed in Robotics Club. Two ultrasonic
range sensors control his responses, similar to the echolocation, or biological sonar,
in a dolphin or a bat. The sensors pick up changes in light to cause reactions when
approached.
Windows and Linux security software,
tools and techniques. Jonah, working
in a team of ten students, captured
first place in an activity that challenged
teams to hack into a simulated or virtual
CMU network. As a follow up to the
workshop, Jonah recently job-shadowed
at UPMC, observing the inner workings
of various IT departments inluding
network security.
Reading current events in the
local newspapers is a common
practice for fifth grade students in Mr.
Scott Donnelly’s class. An article about
self-driving Uber cars in Pittsburgh
started a discussion and lead to an
essay assignment: “Why did Uber
select Pittsburgh for its self-driving car
headquarters?” Further research about
the topic led to investigations in science,