Charlie Schmidt blinked and looked.
Then, he looked again.
“Whoa, did you see that?” the Suncrest Middle School student asked.
“I got him to shoot the basketball.”
The animation on the monitor of his Google Chromebook was a study of ingenuity and inclusivity.
A wheelchair-using avatar
had just made a basket — nothing but net, as the old sportscasters used to say — while another teammate cheered.
It was over in a blip, but it was enough to keep the sixth-grader elevated for the rest of the day.
Welcome to the 2019 edition of National 4-H Youth Science Day, an event staged by the organization that uses everything from agriculture to urban development to motivate young people in positive ways.
The coast-to-coast event was homegrown.
For the second year running, the WVU Extension Service wrote the lesson plan that Charlie’s counterparts from Alabama to Alaska were working through on this day.
“Pitch Your Passion,” was the theme of the day’s exercises.
The idea was to create an animated public service announcement (the pitch) on something you feel strongly about (the passion).
In Charlie’s case, that meant showing empathy to those who are physically disabled and simply extending an invitation.
“I’ve seen people being rude to wheelchair users and making fun of them,” he said.
“I’ve seen people ignoring them. That’s not right.”
Molly Gregory, the Suncrest Middle teacher who hosted the activity in her classroom, always employs technology in her lesson plans — especially basic computer coding.
Coding is the high-tech equivalent of a circus performer in the center ring, with a lion, a chair and a whip.
In smartphone terms, when you code, you’re getting an app to do what you want it to.
Gregory likes this year’s exercise, she said, since it includes coding with the courage of one’s convictions.
Charlie, in the meantime, is a sports fan who might want to major in computer science.
His avatar’s basketball shot impressed him, he said.
“Now I just have to remember what I did.”
