Ending

Last Thursday marked the end of the 2008 MEET Summer Program. It's exceedingly difficult to realize that the sumer is already finished. The Year 2 students finished the summer with 4 stellar project presentations. Quite frankly, I was WOW-ed by how much they had accomplished and how well they presented. (This bit about us being WOW-ed was actually part of their goal, and they met that challenge excellently.)

On Friday, the instructors joined the students on a trip to Tel Aviv, where we hung out on the beach for a few hours. The instructors then returned and began the slow, arduous process of doing feedback surveys, completing interviews, and compiling all of the curriculum material, as process which lasted through Saturday into today.

Today marked the real end - the graduation ceremony for the Year 3 students. It was impressive the see the students' maturity as they introduced each other, reminisced on their time in MEET, and accepted their certificates. Thus followed a period of hugging and photo-taking as students and instructors said their goodbyes.

Expect some backdated entries later with more detail, but at the moment it's 1AM. We're leaving shortly to drive a few hours to get to Masada and watch the sunrise. We'll then spend a few days in Eilat, which will be a much-needed relaxing vacation. I fly back to Boston on Thursday.

This has, by far, been the best summer of my life.

Almost there.

So, this is where I apologize profusely about falling behind in the blogging. It seems I've missed recording about 1.5 weeks of MEET, including MEETConf, the Apprentice Event, and 2 awesome Year 2 milestone presentations. Not only that, but I've skipped an exciting trip to the north this past weekend and a spectacular trip to the desert during the previous weekend. What can I say, I've been busy. I plan to work briefly on creating some backdated entries with my own photos, and in the meantime, I'd encourage you to check out Sally's blog, if you haven't already been keeping up with it. Sally, my fellow instructor, is much more proficient on the blogging, and much better at keeping up to date. Definitely read the entry about the lecture we attended yesterday. I couldn't have described it better myself.

As for my students, they're nearing the end of what's been an awesome summer. The Year 2 curriculum culminates in a final presention, which this year is modeled as a pitch to a venture capitalist. This presentation will occur on Thursday, which means tomorrow is the final day to finish everything. This morning, however, my team managed to produce a functioning program, which is able to send both text and drawing messages across the network. The students were positively bubbling with excitement, and it's amazing to see the quality of work they're accomplishing along with their enthusiasm for working together to finish this project. Tomorrow, they'll work to polish their final deliverables (poster, presentation, video demo) and finish up bits of code. It should be an awesome day.

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Also.

Happy Birthday Dad!