AGazine August 2010

AGazine August 2010

The Online Magazine of the Academic Games Leagues of America

News and Notes	Outstanding Senior	Ding-a-Ling Award
Outstanding Educator	A Thinker If There Ever Was One

News and Notes

AGLOA Board Summer Meeting

Picture Gallery

The 2010 Executive Board meeting took place at the Ramada Orlando Celebration Hotel and Convention Center in Kissimmee FL July 30-August 1.

Results:

Subject to approval by the full Board by August 31:

AGLOA will have a Financial Committee with separate members to raise money and obtain sponsorships to expand academic games to new areas..

An Alumni Committee will communicate directly with alumni on a regular basis and expand the alumni contacts.

The Outreach Committee will develop marketing materials aimed at new school districts and help define how AGLOA can help those districts become involved in academic games.

The Tournament Committee composed of the currently elected Board of Directors will continue to have total control over the National Tournament, the Tournament Rules of each game, and the operational funds associated with the annual National Tournament.

A Mathematics Rules Committee consisting of seven members will vote on all rules proposals for Equations and On-Sets.

The committee will represent the different geographical areas of AGLOA as well as all four divisions.

The intention is to streamline the consideration of rules proposals as well as respond more quickly to issues that arise during the school year or at nationals.

A 5-2 vote is necessary for a proposal to pass.

The AGLOA Board of Directors by majority vote may veto any proposal approved by the committee.

The members of the committee are:
Rod Beard (MI)
Linda Camlin (PA)
Brother Laurence Konersmann (LA)
Eric Nelson (MI)
Mary Jo Peterson (FL)
Brenda Saunders (WV)
Brother Neal Golden (LA), Chair

The Propaganda technique names will stay as is.

Long-range plans were discussed for the 2015 National Tournament, which will mark the 50th anniversary of the first academic games nationals.

By the end of this year, a 50th Anniversary Chairperson and Committee will be named to oversee plans.

One goal is to have present at least one person who attended or played in each of the 50 tournaments.

Another initiative is to develop a 50-year retrospective video and/or printed book.

No decision has been made on the site of the 2015 tournament.

Questions for Local Reading Game Tournaments

Questions for the 2010-11 local tournaments will be available as follows.

Propaganda – September 15

Presidents – October 15

World Events – November 15

League directors should contact AGLOA Executive Director Larry Liss to order sets for their tournaments.

Outstanding Educator

Tobey Tamber traveled to Taiwan in 2000 to participate in a game competition and ended up staying.

Tobey began teaching and tutoring Taiwan kids in English. As parents recognized his ability to help their children raise their grades in that subject, they asked if he could tutor them in math also.

Having played eight years in the IU4 league in Pennsylvania, he decided to use Equations to teach math. One parent didn't like the idea of using games to teach her child. Education and learning were not supposed to be fun and games. So they replaced Tobey with a "stricter" teacher. The parent soon came back when the child's math grades declined.

He started academic games classes in Koahsiung where he lives and in other nearby cities as well.

In his third year of coaching, Tobey brought students to the national tournament in West Virginia. The 2010 tournament was his fourth as a coach. He and his students easily win the yearly prize – if there would be one – for traveling the furthest to compete.

When the tournament last April in Cincinnati ended, Tobey flew home on the 28th in time to be present when his wife Joanne gave birth to their second child the next day.

Tobey actually began his coaching career while a student at Mercer High School.

He recruited his mother Madge to coach the team so that the AG program could continue.

He taught her along with his high school teammates and the elementary school students in the district.

Madge Tamber, an AGLOA Board member for many years, proudly nominated her son for the 2010 Outstanding Educator Award. She was surprised when she won the same award herself!

Tobey and Madge Tamber

Outstanding Senior

Uday Nandipati

Uday Nandipati's senior year at Ben Franklin High School in New Orleans started with uncertainty – who would coach the team? – and ended with AGLOA's highest award.

Heidi Charters, who coached Franklin's team for Uday's first three years of high school, recalls:
When Uday was a freshman, he wanted to win, but he was impatient and thought he did not have to study hard. I think that was the year that Nationals was at West Virginia. I would give up and send the freshman boys out to run up and down the green hills hoping they would tire out and concentrate on practice later. Or at least while they were out running, the rest of the team could practice in peace.

By 12th grade, Uday became the team captain. He was the right hand man to his friend Dwayne Fontenette, an '09 Franklin grad who volunteered to coach the team. When Dwayne couldn't attend practices because of conflicts with his college schedule, Uday stepped up and led them.

Uday also helped Dwayne coach a team at a local elementary school. He has already agreed to mentor another school for 2010-11 while he attends Tulane University.

Uday carved a niche as one of the best players in recent New Orleans Academic Games history. Nationally, he finished 2nd in both Propaganda and On-Sets at the 2009 AGLOA tournament to help his team capture the championship in both games as well as the Senior Sweepstakes title.

In 2010, Uday led the "Nandipati Hotties" to third place in Sweepstakes.

A Thinker If There Ever Was One

Mike Qian ("Chen") of Atlantic Community High School, Delray Beach FL, culminated his academic games career with an outstanding national tournament in Cincinnati last April.

Mike was a member of the Palm Beach County LinguiSHTIK and Propaganda championship teams as well as the third place Equations five.

He took home the Thinker for finishing first in individual sweepstakes in Senior Division.

When you look at Mike's other accomplishments, none of his academic games accolades surprise you.

Atlantic's valedictorian.

Science Pathfinder award.

Semifinalist in the Presidential Scholars competition.

Earned 57 college credits from 19 Advanced Placement exams and six International Baccalaureate tests.

Following graduation, he spent his second summer as an intern at the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter FL. His project involved determining what makes a cell display "hallmark" conditions of Alzheimer's disease.

Mike will travel across the continent to major in computer science at California Institute of Technology. Good luck, Mike! Keep up the great work!

Mike Qian, Senior Sweeps Champ

Mike Qian
Mike interning at Scripps Research Institute

Down Memory Lane

For several decades, one of the most anticipated awards at the closing ceremonies of the national academic games tournament was the Ding-a-Ling Award.

The award "honored" someone who unintentionally did something goofy during the tournament that did not result in harm to anyone or anything.

Like the Outstanding Senior and Educator awards, the Ding-a-Ling recipient was chosen from nominations submitted by adults or students.

The story of the winner's faux pas was read prior to calling the "lucky" student or adult to the stage.

Here is an example of a Ding-a-Ling moment from the 1977 tournament at Gatlinburg TN.

Jim Davis and Brother Neal, Comrades in Mischief, created a fictitious team called the "Wabash Cannonballs."

Since Jim was Chief Scorekeeper and Grand Poobah in that era before PCs were available for scorekeeping, it was easy to implement the deception.

After the first two rounds of Equations, Jim listed the Wabash Cannonballs as leading one Senior subdivision.

Brother Neal hovered near the posted standings to gauge players' reactions. As luck would have it, two members of the second place team (which was really leading) discussed their "rival."

Player 1: "Where are the Wabash Cannonballs from?"
Player 2: "I don't know, but I played one of them. He was pretty good."

Imagine Player 2's surprise the last night when he won the coveted (?) Ding-a-Ling Award. As he walked onstage, he told Brother Neal, "I'll never forgive you for this."

The award known for many years as the Larry Liss Ding-a-Ling Award was discontinued when it was discovered that the last few winning stories were entirely fictional.