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Teens tutor peers online to fill need during pandemic
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — When her suburban Dallas high school was forced to move online last spring because of the coronavirus pandemic, Charvi Goyal realized that the schoolmates she’d been informally tutoring between classes would still need extra help but wouldn’t necessarily be able to get it. So she took her tutoring online, as well.
Goyal, a 17-year-old high school junior from Plano, roped in three classmates to create TutorScope, a free tutoring service run by high schoolers for other kids, including younger ones. What started with a handful of instructors helping friends’ siblings in their hometown has blossomed into a group of 22 tutors from Texas, Arizona, and Ohio that has helped more than 300 students from as far away as South Korea.
“I could foresee that schools were going to go virtual. And with that there were a couple of problems because the interactions between students and students, and students and teachers would be weakened,” Goyal said.
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Changes, challenges: The not-so-secret life of pandemic pets
CINCINNATI (AP) — Olivia Hinerfeld’s dog Lincoln and Kate Hilts’ cat Potato have something in common: They both like to interrupt Zoom calls as their owners work from home.
“Sometimes it’s better to preemptively put him on your lap so he can fall asleep,” says Hilts, a digital consultant in the Washington, D.C., area.
Jealous of the attention that Hinerfeld is paying to her video conference call, Lincoln, a golden retriever, will fetch “the most disgusting” tennis ball he can find from his toy crate to drop into the lap of the Georgetown University Law School student.
For many dogs, this is life as it was meant to be: humans around 24/7, walks and treats on demand, sneaking onto beds at night without resistance. Cats — many of whom, let’s be honest, were already socially distancing before humans knew what that was — are more affectionate than ever, some now even acting hungry for attention.
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Raise your mittens: Outdoor learning continues into winter
PORTLAND (AP) — Cindy Soule’s fourth graders in Maine’s largest city have studied pollination in a community garden. They solved an erosion problem that was damaging trees. They learned about bear scat.
Then came a fresh layer of snow and temperatures that hovered around freezing — but her students were unfazed.
Bundled up and masked, they scooted outside with their belongings in buckets. They collected their pencils and clipboards, plopped the buckets upside down in the snow, took a seat and went to work.
The lesson? Snow, of course, and how snowflakes are formed.
Schools nationwide scrambled to get students outdoors during the pandemic to keep them safe and stop the spread of COVID-19. Now, with temperatures plummeting, a smaller number of schools — even in some of the nation’s most frigid climes — plan to keep it going all winter long, with students trading desks in warm classrooms for tree stumps or buckets.
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Portraits of a pandemic – ‘Pandemic Strolls Bangor’
BANGOR – As of this moment, we here in Bangor – along with people across the globe – continue to deal with the circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic. That said, as difficult as it might be to comprehend right now, it will eventually end. Even now, we are getting glimpses of hope, hints at a possible light at the end of this long tunnel. COVID-19 will become a tragic memory.
And we should remember.
That’s what Sean Faircloth has tried to do with “Pandemic Strolls Bangor: One City in the Year of Covid.” From the early, confusing days of March through the long summer and into the autumn, Faircloth walked the streets of Bangor every day, taking pictures of what he saw. The end result is a visual documentation of some of what our city experienced over these too-long months.
Every photo in this book was taken within the city limits of Bangor. There was no specific intent initially; Faircloth was simply walking around town in an effort to escape the confines of home, to get out into the open air and engage in a little exercise. Along the way, he started taking photos; gradually, these photos coalesced into something more – this project.
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Academics, video game makers team up in rare collaboration for mental health research
LONDON (AP) — A study by Oxford University researchers on how playing video games affects mental health used data from video game makers, marking what the authors say is a rare collaboration between academics and the game industry.
Lack of transparency from game makers has long been an issue for scientists hoping to better understand player behaviors.
The paper released Monday by the Oxford Internet Institute comes as video game sales this year have boomed as more people are stuck at home because of the pandemic and many countries have once again imposed limits on public life.
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