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 renowned 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.

The three bright young finalists in the 2007 competition: Emily, Eli, and Conrad. The winner of the 2007 Pythagorean Award is Conrad. Congratulations!

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!

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.

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