Matt Giannuzzi took first place with his Snowboarding pin. Jackson Thibault took second place with his derpy looking 802 cow pin. And finally, Laura Alger took third place with her cow.

These students will be representing Cawd and CTE at the Vermont State SkillsUSA competition in April. They will be up against the best designs from around the state. Each student will be giving a 5 minute presentation to a panel of judges on the aspects of their pin and their design process.

I found it funny that the 1st pin was a snowboarder, the second place pin was a cow, and then the third place pin was a combination of the first and second place pins.

Let us know what you think about the winning pins, and maybe what the students should talk about during their presentations.

-Herr

Here are the top 15 pins, in no specific order, for CAWD. All of these pins were created entirely by students. This means none of this work was clipart or stock photography.

8 of these pins were created by CAWD I students, and 7 were created by CAWD II students.

Note: Open first image with lightbox, then use arrows on keyboard to navigated between previous and next pins.

Let us know which one you like best, give us some feedback, or even how you would vote in the comments.

We had several past CAWD 2 students come in and visit during their college break. We had students visiting from as far away as RIT. We also had a few former students call out sick from work so they could come in and play.

You can see Riley and Jackson here playing Madden on their 360 on one of the 120″ screens. They were both the Steelers during that game which I don’t think is possible in RL. I think Jackson would normally play the Colts, but they are currently 0-13 and Peyton Manning’s head is no longer attached to his body. Go Dolphins!

You can see Wallace, who was visiting from Champlain College, getting owned by Mr. Herr in Madden on Cawd’s LED TV.

Mr Hill came down to visit and check out the Smash Bros 64 action in his Turkey hat. I think they probably played 50 games of Smash Bros 64.

You can see a few 1st years playing Zelda on a Gamecube and Forza 4 on the 360.

Kody is playing GT5 on a 120 inch screnn. I don’t think he is close enough though. I think he physically had to rotate his head to look at his speedometer on the right side of the screen.

Some 2nd years even brought in some weird card game and played it in between Madden and Halo matches.

During lunch a couple of past second years took a trip to Little Caesar’s and picked up 20 Pizzas and a few sodas.

We plan on having another Game Day next Wednesday, the 21st before the Holiday break. So spread the word and come in, bring your systems, money for pizza and prepare to lose at any video game I am playing.

- Mr. Herr

The project was for each student to take 5 photos representing Autumn, and then 5 photos representing each of the following words: Heat, Wet, Decay, Conflict and Straight.

          

Leave your comments, let us know what you think of the photos and which you like the best.

Challengers documented their progress as they demonstrated their skills in Web Programming (HTML, XHTML and CSS), Web graphics, Web site design, Web accessibility and usability, Web site management, project management, Web multimedia and equally important professionalism.

You can view the Web Design Teams scores below:

As you can see from the scores Cawd led or almost led in graphics / type, overall design, coding, process, and professionalism.

Both Lodie and Angel earned 40k towards college and I think they won some software, maybe?? Let me know what else you won Lodie or Angel.

Now onto 3d… In 3d the Cawd team of Chace and Kody place 12th in our first ever showing in 3d. Chace and Kody did an amazing job in their contest considering they couldn’t even use the files the judges gave to them due Cawd running a different version of the software.

You can view the 3d Teams scores below:

Kody and Chase both won 3d mice / navigation device things… I don’t really know how to describe them or use them but they look cool. Check them out here.

The Cawd Quizbowl team yet again got stuck in their round one room with both the Gold medal team and the Bronze medal team. Even thought they were in a room with a bunch of cyborg jeopardying zombies, they managed to place 21st. This may not seem that great, but after hearing some of the questions that were answered in 5 seconds, I am confident that I couldn’t have done better if I had an internet connection and 5 minutes per question.

On the third day at Nationals, the 3d team had to be at their competition across town at 9am. So being paranoid about being late, Cronin and the 3d team decided they should be up a 6:30 or so and go down to breakfast together. Cronin go to their room at 6:30 ish, saw that they were still asleep, and decided to prank them. He went in yelling about how it was 8:50 and that the competition was starting in 10 minutes. Hilarity ensued as Kody and Chace tried to get in their competition clothes in 2 minutes, Jackson and Cronin giggled, and Riley sat up in bed mumbled and was just all around confused.

When Cawd was not competing or prepping, we were hanging out around Kansas City keeping it real. Cawd played a fair bit of Smash Bros on the N64 and I believe I won most if not all of the matches being the best character, Kirby. As a group, we also went to PF Changs, Panera, went swimming, Game Stop and a whole slew of places that I can’t remember right now. After all of the competitions were complete we celebrated by going out to the movies as a group to see ‘Super 8′.

I think the only downside to the whole trip was having to get up at 3:30 in the morning to head back to BTown. So when you look at the photos from the trip and their are sleeping people, it was from going to sleep at 1 after winning gold and having to wake up 2.5 hours later.

You can view all of the photos from the trip on our Flickr Photostream.

Don’t forget to ‘Like’ Cawdvt on facebook so you can receive updates.

And for those of you keeping track at home, Cawd now has a Gold, Silver and Bronze medal at SkillsUSA Nationals.

Is there anything I’m forgetting?.. Oh, Cherry limeade is best. Let me know if there is anything else.

~Herr

Lodie and Angel kicked butt at the Web Design competition and got gold.

Hannah competed in the pin design competition with her Champ pin and won silver.

Kody and Chace competed in the 3D competition and brought back gold medals.

Allie and Trono competed in the 3D competition and got bronze.

Shelby and Lizzie teamed up last minute due to an absence and would have totally made silver if they didn’t get disqualified.

Quizbowl took gold again this year but it wasn’t so easy. The rules have changed since last year, but luckily Gonzo was there to fix everything.

Trolol working hard on his 3D advertisement.

Overall this was a great and memorable competition for CAWD and everyone is looking forward to going to Kansas City.

Here are the top 15 pins, in no specific order, for CAWD. All of these pins were created entirely by students. This means none of this work was clipart or stock photography.

7 of these pins were created by CAWD I students, and the remaining 8 were created by CAWD II students.

Note: Open first image with lightbox, then use arrows on keyboard to navigated between previous and next pins.

Let us know which one you like best, give us some feedback, or even how you would vote in the comments.

TJ took silver in pin design and Goodie and Grizzles took bronze in web design. Along with our web and pin team we had a quizbowl team that consisted of Angel, Dwatts, CTall, Rathburn and myself.

After a long layover and playing Mario Kart for the DS on the plane ride we arrived at the hotel.

It had 14 floors, a pool, glass elevators, free breakfast and was perfectly setup for dropping things on the unsuspecting people below. We attended only the mandatory meetings and ceremonies and spent the rest of our time doing things like visiting the Apple Store, going to GameStop, and playing Smash.

Cronin ‘Leroy-ed’ it across a street and almost got us hit by a car on our way to PF Changs for lunch. We watched the Futurama premier and attempted to throw together a poker game and then waited until 2am for our pizza that never got delivered.

We had lunch at a hipster restaurant called Blanc Burgers and Bottles where we ate 100$ burgers and fries served in mini shopping carts then shoved into a van that was NOT meant to fit all 10 of us.

We made a trip to the grocery store where TJ and Cronin split a case of Mountain Dew and TJ ended up carrying it all the way back to the hotel in the 90+ degree heat. And somehow while all of us were sweating and whining about the heat Waters managed to never take off his sweatshirt. We ate the worst pizza any of us had ever tasted, and during the competitions we walked around the booths and got Autodesk bandanas and attempted to trade pins with other states.

We chugged cherry limeade and TJ turned a big pillow into Goodie.

We visited Coldstone Creamery and got some ice cream that melted as soon as we stepped outside and overall we had a great trip, had a lot of fun and did well at nationals then almost missed our flight home because everybody slept through their alarms. And somehow by the end of the trip I had no silly bandz left. Goodie, if you’re reading this I want my pink hippo back!

View all of the photos from the trip here in a flash gallery.

~Nikki