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I know I am not formally writing my blog right now, but I did promise to drop exciting information here, over the summer. I have really exciting news!

First thing, I am the proud brother to a junior drum major. Isn’t that cool? Kaden decided he wanted to take on a leadership role in marching band next year. So, he applied for everything, and he was selected to be junior drum major. Yay! Good job, Kaden! Go Dolphins!

Next thing. So, guess what? My team took 3rd place in the Cyber Competition. Again. Yay! This competition proved to be the most challenging yet because in the past, we have had our code all ready to demo and present to judges. This year, we had to write the code on-site, and we only had 2 hours to do that. You might think we would come to the competition and go to a workstation to start writing code, but nope, we had to find plugs for our computers, and there were not enough power strips for all of the teams. You can just imagine how exciting that was. 😂 Then, we had to do a software download, which took about 20 minutes, cutting in to our coding time. A lot of teams were really frustrated by this, and just quit. My team felt like doing that. Trust me, nothing was going right on the computer side of the competition. But, we didn’t give up. Anyway, we took 3rd place. So, remember my tiny 3rd place medal from last year? I didn’t get any kind of personal trophy this year. At least the one that my school gets to keep is bigger than last years. 😂

Third thing. I earned some really great awards this year. That was just icing on the cake of a awesome year! My school is absolutely amazing!

I hope you had a great ending to your school year. Have a terrific summer! Go play Acalympics

Good morning and happy long weekend! I hope that you had an awesome week. I did and yep it was busy. 😂

I just wanted to let you know that I will be taking a break from this blog over the summer. I will pop in from time to time to post exciting updates. However, I will resume writing my blog in the fall.

Have a terrific summer! Thank you so much for supporting Acalympics!

Good morning and Happy Weekend! I hope that you had an amazing week. My week was great, and busy! 😂 I am pretty sure it will be like that until June 8. Then, things calm down.

I wanted to say thank you for all of the interest you have shown in Acalympics! Wow! I have gotten some great ideas. I have always been asked some really good questions, so I wanted to take a minute to answers those.

1. What exactly is Acalympics? What is this website designed to do? I came up with the idea for Acalympics.com when I was in 6th grade. You can read more about the specifics on about page for this blog or you can click here Acalympics about tab. In a nut shell, I did a lot of research on the importance of memorizing math facts and how it benefits your brain. I wanted to come up with a fun way for students to work on this.

2. How do I play on Acalympics? Choose any team, and then select either math or Spanish, then, click the play button . Here is a link to Acalympics .

Bock, J. (2018). A Picture of Acalympics After Reset. [digital image] CC BY-NC

There is no time limit, so if you need to use a piece of paper or pencil to compute your answers, that is just fine. Pick any team you want. You can’t hurt any teams score, but answering incorrectly. The goal is just to practice! I have done some pretty informal research oh if Acalympics is effective and I have been shocked by how well it works. Hopefully this summer I can get a formal research study up on Acalympics .

3. How does the scoring work? You earn points by answering questions correctly. You earn more points the higher up in level you go. This was done so people wouldn’t just repeat single digit addition over and over. 😉 Also, the medals will be announced for the top 3 teams for each board every Friday evening at 8pm, (or 7pm when we are off daylight savings time). I wanted the teams not to get so far behind the leader that they quit trying. Everyone starts fresh at 0 after the medals are virtually awarded. You can always check the medals here Acalympics medalists .

4. How do I formulate the questions and how do I decide the order? I frequently visit the Virginia Dept. Of Education to get a list of the math standards and the order they have listed. For Spanish, I have been given access to our Spanish Teachers quizlet site. I make the questions from her lists, in the order she has.

5. Do I plan to add additional subjects? YES! I am working with my piano teacher to get a music theory category added. In addition, I plan to extend Spanish and Math, and add French. I want to add a login in system too. That way the top scorers can be highlighted as well and daily challenges can be added (challenges that gives a reward to your team).

6. Is Acalympics free? Yes, I have also worked hard on also keeping it ad-free so schools can use it.

I hope that covers all of the questions I have gotten. I just wanted to thank everyone that has supported Acalympics. Thank you to all of the teachers that have used Acalympics and also to the teams that are consistently competing. I really love to get feedback, and have loved getting all of your ideas! If you have any additional questions or feedback, please please email me info@acalympics.com.

Have a great weekend. Go play Acalympics.com

Good morning and Happy Weekend! I hope that you had an awesome week. I did! If you think I am going to say that my week was busy, you are right! 😂 I got to do something really cool this week, that I am going to tell you about.

On Wednesday night I got to see Yanni in concert. I was really excited about this, because I have Yanni music playing in my bedroom all of the time. My mom is real big on music. Since I have been born, she has kept Yanni music playing all over the house. (She liked Yanni because of the all of the different instruments he uses, plus it is over all calming music.) My mom thinks when you have music playing and you are working on homework, it engages both sides of your brain. While, I am not sure about this, maybe always being exposed to music, helped me have a love for music. Anyway, Yanni is getting pretty old, so I was happy I got to see him in concert.

This was the second “grown up” concert I have attended. Yanni is an absolutely incredible musician. He played on no less than 9 keyboards. He had a piano set up, and different keyboards for different sounds. (My only criticism was he should have had a real wind instrument instead of a synthesized one, but I understand sometimes you can’t afford everything you want and you have to compromise and make hard choices. ) Yanni could jump between keyboards and run back and forth between the piano and the keyboards without missing a note. He was incredible! I wondered exactly how he did this. I am thinking about trying it at my next piano lesson. 😂 My piano teachers has two pianos, I am thinking about jumping from one to the other to see exactly how this works. 😂 I am just kidding. The last concert I saw was the piano guys, and Jon (the pianist) played the piano with his nose, and while laying down on the bench. I told my piano teacher I wanted to learn how to play the piano with my nose too. 😂

I don’t know if you know much about Yanni, but he has a really interesting story. He came to America when he was 18, and didn’t speak any English. He learned the language and put himself through school, and earned a masters degree in Psychology. However, his passion was always music. Yanni stayed focused on that and despite setbacks, kept working on creating music. Since I am familiar with just about every song he has ever written, I am happy that he stuck with it. Personally, I think music touches a part of your soul, that words can’t reach.

Thinking about Yanni and his success always reminds me of a quote by Henry Ford. He said “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, either way, you are right.” and I know this holds true for Yanni. I read an article once, where someone was talking about meeting Yanni when he was in college. He said Yanni was “flamboyantly Yanni”. He went on to explain, Yanni always thought he would succeed, and as Mr. Ford said “he was right.”

Okay, so I get that I am just a 7th grader, and a good portion of my audience are students. Some kids or adults, might question how this story relates to their life. Let me tell you about my brother Kaden. 🙂 Kaden is taking Advanced Placement Chemistry. Kaden loves Chemistry, but this is definitely not an easy class. Anyway, Kaden signed up to take the AP Chemistry exam. He didn’t expect the exam to be easy, but he did expect to do well on this test. Kaden attended 4 Saturday study sessions for this exam, with one of the sessions lasting from 8:30-4:30. Also, he stayed after school almost every day for 3 weeks, to attend every study sessions available. Plus, he brought his study guide book in the car everywhere we went, and he studied the whole car ride. My parents didn’t make Kaden do all this. In my opinion, Kaden is very much demonstrating Mr. Ford’s quote. Kaden thought he could do great on his exam, and he took all of the steps necessary to make this happen. We don’t know how Kaden’s AP exam went yet, we won’t have those scores until July. He thought he did well. He felt prepared for every question that was on there.

Bock, J. (2018). Kaden’s Textbook. [digital image] CC BY-NC

So, that is my whole point this week. If you decide you want to do something, believe that you can! Then put in the work and make success happen. 😉 Really, it is as simple as that.

Okay, I am off to practice my instruments this morning. I practice 3 on a regular basis and that takes some time. Have a great week, and go play Acalympics .

Good morning and Happy Weekend! I hope that you had an awesome week. I did, and yup! I was busy!

With teacher appreciation week coming up, I wanted to take a minute to say “Thank you,” to everyone who has supported Acalympics . I have gotten so much encouragement and positive feedback! I have had so many people, teachers, students, and administrators use my website, and tell me about the positive impact it is making. Words can not accurately describe how grateful I am for that! Thank you so very much, I appreciate you!

I wanted to take a minute to let you know about where I want Acalympics to go. I hope that you have had the time to play the Math or the Spanish game. I know I probably don’t need to explain to you exactly what Acalympics is, but just in case you haven’t had the opportunity to use the website yet, here is a very brief description. I created a website that you can practice skills while earning points for your team. There is no time limit, or penalties. I wanted Acalympics to be a fun way to practice skills.

Here are some of the ideas I have for Acalympics . Disclaimer, I just wrote all of my deadlines in my calendar, so honestly all of these ideas will be on my summer break projects list. 😂 I have gotten requests from users to be able to identify the top scorers for day, and week on each of the boards. I think that is a fabulous idea! But, I also don’t want to make anyone feel embarrassed by their score. So, I am working on a mechanism that will allow users to create an Acalympics Website name, like Crunchy Goldfish, or Rainbow Sparkle Cat. This way Acalympics can display the top scorers, but it will still be anonymous.

Working along this idea will also allow Acalympics to track users skill level. Simply put, if you constantly ace all of the additions, subtraction, and multiplication problems, but are challenged by fractions, the website will know where to start you. Another aspect of having a login system will allow teachers to make challenges (quizzes) for their class. I am creating a feature that will make creating quizzes for specific students an easy thing to do.

Next, I want to add more subjects. I have been talking with my piano teacher about adding music theory to Acalympics . Personally, I take a theory test at ODU every year. I will say it is really hard to study for that test because there are just not a lot of resources out there. My piano teacher and I thought we could create levels of music theory based on the tests at ODU. Music students could review for these tests by practicing their skill knowledge on Acalympics . I hope this will be a helpful resource for all music teachers from elementary and up.

Also, I take French, not Spanish, 😂 so I want to add a French category. I want to add English, Geography, and Science categories too. I am in the process of learning how to level these questions. In case you wondered how I get my questions, I utilize the Virginia Department of Education to create my levels. I frequent their website to look at the order and the objectives when creating my questions and levels.

Phew! This sounds like a lot of work I have to do! However, I am not going to let myself worry because one quote I try to keep in the back of my mind is by Nelson Mandela. “It always seems impossible until it is done.” 😉

If you have any ideas that you would like to see on Acalympics , let me know. While I might not get to your request right away, I am keeping a list of all of the good ideas people have brought to my attention.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. 🙂 I can not stress enough how appreciative I am for all of the people that support Acalympics and support me! Have a great weekend and go play Acalympics . Don’t forget to send me your ideas.