Mariner student named Vmath Maniac of the Week
Last week an eighth-grade student at Mariner Middle School was named Vmath Maniac of the Week for outsmarting other students around the world.
Sean Russette was recognized for participating in Vmath Live (www.vmathlive.com), an online math skills program where students log on and participate in competitions rated on speed and skills.
Last week Mariner Middle earned approximately 62,000 points and was ranked 17 out of the top 50 schools in the United States participating in Vmath. Other schools from the United Kingdom, Australia, Hong Kong and South Africa also use the system, which lauds that more than 3 billion problems have been answered online.
“In order to earn that number of points you would have to not only work on it in school, but also he had to spend quite a bit of time at home working on it to earn the amount of points that would beat out any other students playing around the world,” said Shelley Siriano, assistant principal of Mariner Middle.
Siriano said it is clear that Russette has exceptional math and computer skills because mental acuity and speed on a keyboard amount to success in the program. He also spent some time at home competing online.
In order to qualify for the Math Maniac of the Week recognition, a student needs to earn more than 1,000 points and receive a bronze certificate.
“The faster you move, the more points you earn. It just so happens he was able to stretch himself and win last week,” she said.
Math teacher Nancy Kass uses Vmath in her eighth-grade classes and often brings her students to the computer lab to log on to the program. On average, Siriano said students are using the program once a week.
“Ms. Kass has been doing this early into the first semester when we got the licensing and set up all of the kids with logins,” said Siriano. “We weren’t using this last year.”
Last week Russette’s named was placed at the top of Vmath’s Web site, declaring him Maniac of the Week. He received a free backpack, a certificate and a copy of the site with his name posted.