Ted Nesi ’07 – Wheaton Quarterly

History major combs through correspondence for clues to the past

Summer 2012 by Ted Nesi '07

John Winthrop’s name is famously synonymous with the Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. But a wide-ranging research project by Jacob Pomerantz ’12 shows the Pilgrim father’s influence on the British colonies was felt far from Plymouth Plantation.

Pomerantz spent two semesters last year in Wheaton’s library poring over archival letters sent and received by Winthrop, his sons and their associates, piecing together how they spread their wings from Massachusetts to Connecticut, the Caribbean, and England—and the vital role played by written correspondence in connecting their distant societies.

“Within one generation, the Winthrop family went from being an unremarkable Puritan family living in England to a family that spanned the globe,” says Pomerantz, a history major who grew up in New Jersey. “The Winthrops were not just founders of Massachusetts, but also participants in the development of a much broader English Atlantic world.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Around the Dimple, People Tagged With: Humanities

Playing at work

Summer 2012 by Ted Nesi '07

Joseph Lavoine ’06 designs new computer game

When Joseph Lavoine ’06 graduated from Wheaton with a degree in computer science, the iPhone was still a year away from release and the iPad was just a gleam in Steve Jobs’s eye. Six years later, he’s using his education to create original games for Apple’s best-selling devices.

Lavoine has founded his own gaming company, Done Right Studios, which put out his first release in October 2011. The 99-cent puzzle game, “Origami Adventure,” challenges players to quickly choose between different colored animals to rack up points. “It’s a game about timing coordination—a bit like the old classic ‘Tetris,’” Lavoine explains. “Players choose between different origami animals—from cats to whales—that move at different speeds. The object of the game (to rack up points) is to get multiple animals of the same color in a row. But since the animals move at different speeds, players need to be crafty about which one they pick to make sure they keep having the same color hit the other end of the screen in sequence.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Alumnae/i, People Tagged With: Sciences

Creating a strong connection between technology and education

Summer 2011 by Ted Nesi '07

From electric cars to iPads, technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, deepening its inroads into every part of modern American life.

Well, not every part. Young people may spend much of their free time with video games and Facebook, but the schools that teach them have remained firmly in the 20th century.

Cheryl Vedoe ’74 is working to change that.

“When you look at education—and K–12 education in particular—largely what goes on in the classroom is no different than when I was in elementary school, middle school or high school,” she said. “So the reality is that technology has not had much impact on the way teaching and learning occur.”

Since 2002, Vedoe has been CEO of Apex Learning, a Seattle company that offers computer-based courses for high school students. More than 1 million students have taken one of Apex’s classes, which were first developed for distance learning, but are now used in traditional classrooms, too. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Alumnae/i, Features, Go Beyond, People