Huge Thanks to Charlie

I would like to take a moment and thank Charlie for the tremendous amount of work that has undoubtedly gone into the Challenge this year. Opportunities like these don't come around every day. My students had a wonderful experience with the Challenge. Keep up the amazing work! I look forward to collaborating with you on the Pringles Challenge and any other activities/ideas in the future!

The Scores are Posted!

Please take a minute to check out the scores. See if I've made any terrible mistakes. If there are any (and I'm sure there must be one or two!) let me know and I'll correct them. The easiest way to do that is to resubmit the spreadsheet, don't make me hunt through 400+ e-mails. Just tell me what's wrong, and I'll try to make it go away. There are still many blanks. Send the data as soon as you can.

Clear Skies (not here, we're buried),

Charlie

I'm Back!

Greetings! I had a great time on "The Coast." We came back to the other Coast just in time to catch the eclipse. We got the cats back this morning, and I saw that I had 453 e-mail messages! I'll start to add your results to your pages. It looks like I have about 70 messages with scores from you. They shoul all be up by the end of the day tomorrow. We're getting a major snowstorm tomorrow, so I'm not going anywhere.

Clear Skies,

Charlie

Need email address

I need the email to send scores to.

Mike

Final Posting of Results

Greetings! Hopefully you're buried in packages, and amazed at the schemes and strategies your partner school used. If you post me your results by Wednesday of this week, they will be posted immediately to the website. We are on vacation after that, so don't look for anything to be posted until after the 20th. Speaking of the 20th, there's a total eclipse of the Moon that night. Don't forget to tell your students about it. It's tough for me because we're on vacation, but hopefully they'll remember.

Clear Skies (especially on the 20th),

Charlie

Writing on Packages

Can packages have both "FRAGILE" and "HANDLE WITH CARE" on them? Or, can they only have one or the other? Just want to be consistent.

Thanks!!

Cost of Challenge

I mailed off my packages yesterday - all except for 2 that the post office refused - one didn't meet 1st class mail criteria and the other used a priority mail box. I sent them home with the kids today to fix and I am going to mail them tomorrow. My total bill came to right over $110! The kids really enjoyed this project and I feel that it was a wonderful thing for them to participate in. But how does everyone else pay for this? I was able to tap in to some money through a science consumable fund that we have. But, this is the last year for this fund so I am brainstorming for next year. I can't ask the students to pay, but I can't pay that much myself either. I hate to do it in only one or two classes - the other classes just wouldn't think that is fair. Most students worked in pairs already, so even if I required everyone to work in pairs, it wouldn't cut the total cost by very much. How does everyone else pay for this?

Score Those Packages

This is the best week! Hopefully packages have started to arrive at your school. If you haven't already done so, please visit the "How to" guide at http://www.gatesscience.info/teamescience/howto.htm and scroll down to "Receiving Packages." At the very bottom is a link to an Excel spreadsheet you can use for scoring. Send me only the school's scores when you think you have all of the packages. Remebr, I'm dealing with 132 individuals. DO send the scores to your partner school as you record them. These people are anxiously waiting for their results.

Enjoy this week and the next. Send me any images or anecdotes that you want, and I'll post them to your page.

Enjoy,

Charlie