Meeting their other ‘half’

A pair of Early College High School freshmen will visit England this summer after winning the school’s annual Global Awareness Project, which examines human migration.

Freshmen McKenna Gordon and Brittany Stump took first in the project after building a website that explores the weighty topic.

The announcement of their trip to Scunthorpe was made during a lunchtime ceremony at the Costa Mesa campus at Coastline Community College.

“It’s rare that students have exposure to this topic at such a young age,” said Lisa Rodriguez, who teaches anthropology at the high school and was the instructor and the project coordinator. “I was impressed by their level of interest and by the amount of things they learned from this.”

Each year, Early College High School, Coastline Community College and the Newport Mesa Unified School District hold the Global Awareness Project competition. The purpose is to focus on worldwide issues.

Students compete in teams of four, with two students from Early College and two from a similar-sized high school in England.

The students collaborate on the project for months. They communicate through e-mail and social-networking sites. The end goal is to create an attractive and informative website on the assigned topic.

In addition to McKenna and Brittany, Rodriguez said that there were nine other Early College students involved in this year’s competition — Javon McGriff, Ana Martinovic, Neal Lawton, Mary Simich, Nathaniel Zucker, Carlos Guerra, Max Mendez, Juan Grajales and Nolan Daigle.

Upon hearing their names announced as winners, McKenna and Brittany immediately called their parents.

“I just called my mom,” McKenna said. “She announced it to her whole office, and everyone was screaming!”

McKenna’s mom, Kymberly Gordon, works at Woodland Elementary School in Costa Mesa.

The websites were judged based on the quality of the information, suggestions, resources, artwork, extra research, spelling and grammar, user-friendliness, and visual appeal.

The judges were John McDermott, a professor of anthropology, Fullerton College; Barbara Erickson, a professor of anthropology, Cal State Fullerton; and Kenneth Schaffer, a special agent for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“All of the sites were good, but the winning site had great visuals and was easy to use,” Schaffer said. “All of the kids did a great job considering the weight of the topic.” If you’d like to view the Human Migration website, go to global6.nlc.ac.uk.

— From Staff Reports