Rachel T SapytaC.E.O.Perfect World Luggage, Inc.15415 Triple CreekSan Antonio TX 78247Rachel@usa.net

Roxanne JenkeTeacher, Advance Contemporary LiteracyHarris Middle SchoolSan Antonio, TX

May 18, 2010

Dear Ms. Jenke,

I wanted to take a moment to thank you for the recent assignment, “Talking Walls”. This assignment required the student to do a research project and to create a Powerpoint presentation of the information gathered. I have, overall, been quite dismayed with the project assignments for Dorothy’s 6th-Grade year. This assignment was one of the exceptions.

For the most part, the projects that she has had to do seem to have two main flaws:

1) They do not seem to translate well into skills the the student needs in the year 2010 and beyond and

2) They require too much input from the parent that is, for the most part, “busy work”.

I resent having to buy and haul around poster boards, having to dig around for old photos, and other such nonsense. When the projects requiring this sort of thing are finished, no matter how diligently completed by Dorothy, it feels like there is not much learning to show for it all. The Talking Walls projects was completely different, and is the type of project that teaches much-needed skills.

First, this project required REAL online research. Her “wall” was “Arjuna’s Penance”, a bas relief sculpture in the city of Mahabalipuram in India. I was actually thrilled to find that there was not a whole lot of information on this particular historic site. Aside from Wikipedia, which was not to be used as a main source, she had to really do some digging to find pertinent information. Moreover, she really had to asses the information that she was able to find as to whether it was valuable or just “junk”. As a business owner, inventor and the holder of five US patents, I have to do similar research and sorting functions all of the time, and this is a necessary skill that needs to be developed so that one can be efficient with their time.

Next, Dorothy had to really try to comprehend and organize the information that she was able to find. This was extremely difficult in this particular case, as much of the information was related to Hinduism and Indian cultural references and was further complicated by the difficulty in pronouncing and understanding the Indian names. Of course, it was necessary for me to help her with this, as this was so initially daunting, that she would have given up on it completely, or put together a presentation that she did not really understand. In this instance, I was happy to put in the time to help her to not only understand it, but to figure out HOW to understand it, by looking to Hindu sources, and even meeting with her Indian physician, Dr. Mallaiah Shiva (himself a Hindu), to help with the stories themselves, as well as the pronunciations of the words. I found this process of working to understand the information right on-point with work that I have had to do myself, and still do regularly.

When did my first patent application process in 1990, I hired the patent attorney that I still use who is miserably expensive, charging $285/ hour. He was wonderful, however, in that he would always encourage me

to do much of the research and interpretation work myself in order to save some substantial monies in the process. The first time that I went to the US Patent and Trademark website, I felt much like Dorothy. I found the information that I needed difficult and complicated to research and sort, AND patent language, in and of itself, to be almost unintelligible when one first encounters it. For example, this is one of the actual claims from my first issued patent:

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

FIGS. 1, 2 and 3 illustrate foldable member (10) of applicants' carrying case in a flat or unfolded position. As can be appreciated with reference to FIGS. 1-3, foldable member (10) of applicants' carrying case is typically comprised of two panels removably joined to form the foldable member with the panels having an inner and outer surface.

As you can see, this appears to be so much gobblty-gook, yet it was imperative that I be able to not only understand what the attorney had written, but be able to pick it apart and defend it, in case any of the claims were initially denied by the examiner. My ability to work to understand what was in my own patents was paramount to me not only understanding my patents, but to me saving a lot of money over the years. For Dorothy to have to get past the initial fear of dealing with the information on her topic, to work to comprehend it, then, finally, to really understand it, was an absolutely invaluable lesson which she will need to use over and over again in her lifetime, no matter what she does in the future.

Finally, having the students present this in a Powerpoint presentation is exactly what they need. I have been working my own business for nearly 20 years, and I can honestly say that I have never had to put together a poster for it. However, I routinely use MS Publisher, Powerpoint and other computer programs to organize, share and present information. Powerpoint is one of the programs that I use the least, but I use Publisher continually, and they are very similar. I have to confess that Dorothy did have, and still has, a better working knowledge of Powerpoint than I do. What made this project different is that she had to move past, at least to a certain extent, the tendency to create extremely juvenile looking presentations filled with annoying and often illegible fonts, colors and animations. Trust me when I say that we had a LOT of words with each other about this issue. As strong as her desire was to do this, she truly understood (at least by the end of the process) that if she did too much of that, no one would be able to grasp the information. BECAUSE the information was difficult to understand, she had to make a PP that was more simple,, and that kept things more streamlined than she had ever done before. This was a major breakthrough for her, and it was only the difficulty of the material that forced her to comply. She finally understands that the “fun” stuff is not always going to work for an audience, and, perhaps from this point on, she will begin to move away from entertaining herself with Powerpoint and can start to look at it from the audience’s point of view. On top of this benefit, she had to learn how to use many more of the Powerpoint features with this report, because more was demanded of the presentation.

In closing, please know that I felt that this was one of the only projects this year that moved Dorothy forward in her education and that was appropriate for a 6th-Grade student in the year 2010. If educators do not focus on the real-life skills that our kids need, and, instead are stuck teaching what was taught to us twenty years ago or so, we short-change our kids and their future. I was one of the last people that I know who had to learn how to use a slide-rule. Those after me skipped the slide-rule and went right to the calculator. Our kids do not need to make posters, draw pictures, or even memorize bundles of facts and figures anymore. What they need, is to be proficient in finding and sorting the glut of information available at their fingertips, and to use current technology to present it cohesively to others. The Talking Wall project did a great job in requiring Dorothy to do just that, and as such was my favorite project of the entire year.

Sincerely,