The distinctive facade of the main building on Florida Polytechnic's campus.
Florida’s 12th university, Florida Polytechnic University, is an architectural marvel that sits right next to Interstate 4 in Polk County.
The main building features a swooping veil-like facade designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.
The public can get a peek of the new campus when it opens on Saturday. But WUSF reporter Steve Newborn took a tour with university spokesman Crystal Lauderdale to talk about the features and Calatrava’s intent.
“It was designed to inspire innovation,” Lauderdale said of the design, which she said people have described as looking like a spaceship, a fountain, or less impressively, a football.
This coming Saturday marks the grand opening for Florida’s 12th state university. Florida Polytechnic University, in Polk County, will offer a tuition-free education focused on science, technology, engineering and math — STEM — to its inaugural class of about 550 students. They start on August 25th.
President Randy Avent sat down with Robin Sussingham from WUSF in Tampa to talk about his vision for the new university.
Q: This is not a Silicon Valley, this is not a Research Triangle, this is a rural Polk County location. So how is that going to affect this university? How’s it going to affect your job? Is it going to make recruiting more difficult? Tell me about how this fits in?
A: It will make recruiting more difficult, but it’s an opportunity. We like to use this a catalyst to really develop that [Interstate]-4 corridor, high-tech corridor that everyone talks about. You know, we’re geographically located halfway between Tampa and [the University of South Florida] and Orlando and [the University of Central Florida] – both of them great institutions. And so the question is how can we bridge the gap between those two institutions and help create that mission and create that corridor
Q: I read an article about you recently and he said “Dr. Avent sees the future of university research as less curiosity-driven and more focused on solving real-world problems.” Tell me what that means?
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist says he wants to pause penalties for teachers and schools while Florida transitions to Common Core-based standards and a new online exam.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist said he would pause any penalties for students, teachers and schools while the state transitions to new Common Core-based math and language arts standards and a new online test.
“They’re unfair,” Crist said of why he supports pausing the penalties. “They don’t even know what test they’re going to use now. It’s a disaster. We need to change and we need help.”
Students at the CodeNow workshop in Miami learned to program simple games, such as asking users to quickly match words and colors.
Lots of people think teaching students computer programming is a good idea. But where coding fits in schools is a difficult question.
Is it a science? A language? Career training?
Florida lawmakers proposed, but did not approve, letting students substitute coding for foreign language or physical education courses required for a high school diploma. The idea is also tucked into the education plan of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist.
Students can use computer science or programming to replace a math or science requirement, but not for math courses higher than Algebra 1, nor science courses such as biology, chemistry or physics.
So where does programming fit? And does it squeeze out other subjects?
“It’s a really interesting debate,” said Ryan Seashore, founder of CodeNow, a group which holds coding camps in Miami and other cities. “You can look at whether it’s a science, whether it’s a foreign language or whether it’s like an elective. But for me, it’s however we can get it into schools. Wherever it fits. Wherever you have the talent. All that matters is getting it in front of these kids.”
The Pomodoro Technique was created by programmer and consultant Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s to improve his study habits. It has since caught on with creative professionals, especially in the tech industry.
The strategy is to break big tasks down into a series of smaller tasks. You work in a focused 25-minute burst until the task is done and then you take a short break. After the break, you start on another task and complete it in the next 25-minute period. Continue Reading →
Ryan Seashore starts off every CodeNow workshop with a simple request — write out step-by-step instructions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
A CodeNow teacher pretends to be a robot, and follows the students’ orders exactly as they’re written.
Students quickly find that asking a computer to perform an everyday task isn’t so easy.
John O'Connor / StateImpact Florida
CodeNow's Kareem Grant works with students during a June coding camp in Miami. Grant likes that coding requires disciplined thinking.
“They basically follow every instruction,” said Seashore, who founded CodeNow. “And so if it’s ‘Hey, take out bread from a bag,’ they will tear the bag of bread open. If it’s like ‘Spread the peanut butter’ and they didn’t say ‘Hey, twist the lid off’ it’ll spread the jar on it.
“This is a really amazing exercise because it teaches students the importance of logic.”
The lesson: Good programming starts with organized, disciplined thinking. And one mistake can cause everything to crash.
But like the students learning algebra, it’s difficult to understand the process Moses described without watching students in action. So we sat in last week as the Algebra Project wrapped up orientation for its third group of students at Miami Northwestern High School.
“You can break down math into how you understand,” teacher Sara Weinberg told a group of students tentatively chatting about an assignment. “Break it into your language.”
If you want one of the roughly 1,800 new scholarships for students with disabilities that allows parents to mix and match services for their children, you’d better get an application in soon.
More than 1,200 families applied for a Personal Learning Scholarship Account, or PLSA, in the first week of applications. The scholarships are awarded on a first-come, first-served basis and are intended for students autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and other significant learning challenges.
“We really didn’t expect to see this much demand this quickly,” said Patrick Gibbons, spokesman for Step Up For Students, which administers the state scholarship program.
State leaders weren’t sure how many parents would be aware of the scholarships when lawmakers approved the program this year. But word spread quickly, and more than 700 families said they were interested before enrollment opened July 18th.
Gibbons said the scholarships are more flexible than the state’s other school choice programs.
“You can mix and match public school and private school. You can pay for tutors, speech therapies and even save that money for college.”
The scholarships range in value from about $4,500 to more than $19,000 dollars depending on a student’s grade, school district and disability.
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