Temitope, long time friend of Sepehr’s, made a trip up from LA to speak with OSMO kids about past and present. Formerly a high school football star and MIT alum, Temitope is currently an entrepreneur and coder extraordinaire living in Santa Monica. OSMO students were justly captivated.
Please click here to download our Fall 2012 Application, Due on September 4th at the OSMO Orientation.
OSMO 2012 Parent/Student Orientation (required attendance)
Day/Time: Tuesday, September 4th 6pm-7:30pm
Location: Boys and Girls Clubs of Oakland, 3300 High St Oakland, CA
RSVP required: please send email to Program Director Sepehr Vakil at sepehr.vakil@gmail.com to confirm attendance.
Whether you think this is fashionably late, better late than never, or this is the first time you are hearing about this, OSMO held an open-house in May 2012 to celebrate the hard work students had done throughout the semester. As we are prepping for OSMO 2012-2013, I thought it appropriate to share out a few images and clips from our end of the year event.
OSMO student delivers from amie howard on Vimeo.
Parents, grand-parents, uncles, and aunts join with students and professors from UC Berkeley to celebrate the hard work of OSMO students.
Social justice, hip hop and mathematics. Ise Lyfe connected the dots for not just the students but all of us yesterday when he stopped by OSMO. I, for one, was inspired by him yet again. Much much respect and gratitude to Ise for taking time out of his schedule to give back. Hopefully he will stop by again soon.
IseLyfeSpeaksatOSMO from Sepehr Vakil on Vimeo.
Next Wednesday March 14th Oakland native, spoken word poet and hip-hop artist Ise Lyfe will be paying a visit to OSMO! This is particularly exciting for me as I first heard Ise Lyfe perform at Da Poetry Lounge in Los Angeles, probably back in 2005. Shortly thereafter, I picked up his album “SpreadtheWORD,”which ironically, now reminds me of living in LA. Ise was recently appointed Commissioner of Arts and Cultural Affairs in Oakland, and carries a potently conscious message throughout his music and his art. It is truly a privilege to have him come speak to OSMO students.
Early this year OSMO students collaborated to write a proposal for a community mapping project. The proposal called for the development of a project that would not only position students as creators of technology, but also as advocates for social change in their own communities. Inspired by the development framework App Inventor that allows students with no programming experience to create Android apps, a group of 4 OSMO students wrote a proposal, won some grant money and have now started the development process. The grant was awarded by a group of UC Berkeley studentes who won the Big Ideas Grant Contest at UC Berkeley, one of whom was a mentor for OSMO back in the days when we were located at the La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley! How cool, and fitting, that an alumni-mentor has returned to OSMO to help fund our mobile app project. Said mentor is in the picture below handing over the grant money to one of the students participating in the project.
This semester OSMO students will be starting a mobile app project to map Oakland neighborhoods using health factors like liquor stores and fresh food outlets. As we get started in the next few weeks, we hope to use Youth Radio’s Mobile App Lab as a powerful example and source of inspiration.
Attention ALL OSMO 9th graders: The Summer Math and Science Honors Academy (SMASH) is now taking applications for the summer. I encourage all of you to apply.
SMASH scholars spend five weeks each summer at a SMASH site on a college campus (currently at UC Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA and USC) immersed in rigorous STEM classes. SMASH Scholars live on campus for five weeks each of three summers (after their 9th, 10th and 11th grade years) with other high potential Black, Latino/a, Native American, Southeast Asian or Pacific Islander high school students. LPFI admitted 120 new students to participate in SMASH Academy for summer 2011 an expects to admit approximately 120 new scholars for 2012. We welcome applicants who are excited to work hard and to take advantage of our many resources. SMASH is free for all admitted students.
SMASH scholars also receive year-round academic support including SAT prep, college counseling, financial aid workshops and other activities to ensure continued academic success. SMASH is expanding to additional college campuses nationwide in the future.
Applicant registration for SMASH 2012 is now open. Applicants must be registered by February 23, 2012 and completed applications are due March 1, 2012. Applicants must be in 9th grade now to be eligible to apply.
Attention All Female High School Juniors! This is a great opportunity for this summer to get involved with the NASA Johnson Space Center. Collaborate with girls from across the country and female NASA engineers. For specific information and to apply visit http://wish.aerospacescholars.org. Apply before February 15, 2012.
Over the weekend I attended the Creating Balance Conference in San Francisco at Mission High School. The conference was about exploring the connections between math education and social justice. Besides the inspirational keynote speaker Lisa Delpit (if you get past her mic issues she was great), I especially enjoyed the workshop put on by the Young Peoples Project. The Quad City Project, developed by YPP high schools students, uses the Boston public transit system to teach the coordinate axes to elementary and middle-school students. Instead of locating the point (4,3) through a classic x and y coordinate approach, you take the Red Train 4 stops Outbound then transfer to the Bus 3 stops Inbound, for example. They had us run through the game to get a feel for it. Pretty cool stuff, connecting math to real life experiences. The best part about it is that it was developed by high school students. 
YPP, which is an outgrowth of the Algebra Project, is a youth-led organization dedicated to math literacy and social change. Based out of Boston, YPP has sites all over the country. But not in Oakland. I talked to one of the reps at the conference about different ways OSMO can collab with YPP. They seemed very enthusiastic. Food for thought..
