Midway has been a member of the Junior National Beta Club since 2005. It is available to 7th and 8th graders. Students are invited into Junior Beta based upon their academic standing after 6th grade, having maintained a B average or better and exhibited proper conduct. The MCCS Chess Club is a place for everyone who wants to learn to play chess. Competition is not the only aspect of the MCCS Chess Club; students can also attend for a relaxing game with friends. Each practice is filled with a chance to learn new tactics and strategies for the game, challenge your mind solving interesting chess puzzles, and plenty of time to play games against other chess enthusiasts. For more information contact Mrs. Leah Shvartsman. Our main goal in drama, is to glorify God through drama. We learn some different ways to present drama material, we play games that emphasize some different aspects of drama, and we practice for upcoming plays that could be performed in chapel, the talent show, and end of the year productions.
Drama club meets every Wednesday from 3:30-4:25. It is available for any 5th through 8th grade students. For more information contact Mr. Justin Mattick Fellowship of Christian Athletes, FCA, is open to all middle school students. FCA meets every Friday morning in the room off the gym for food, fun, fellowship and spiritual growth. Even though the word athlete is in our name, everyone is welcome! For more information contact Mrs. Sandy Burton. The Junior Master Gardener program has been a part of Midway since 2003. This after-school club is available to students in 3rd and 4th grade. Volunteer Master Gardeners lead the students through the entire gardening process from preparing the soil in the fall, to planting seeds, to harvesting the fruits of their labors. Students who successfully complete the program receive a certificate at the end of the year. The MCCS Robotics Club meets every Monday. The goal of this club is to give the students an opportunity to participate in a shared leadership experience in which they collaborate together to build and program autonomous robots that are capable of performing specified tasks.
The robotics club is designed to get the students involved in STEM learning activities and to provide many opportunities for fun competition. The MCC Robotics Club is a member of the First Lego League (FLL). For more information contact Dr. Matthew Ross. MCCS is excited to continue the implementation of the Safety Patrol Program. Our Safety Patrol program is open to 4th and 5th graders. The primary purpose of the program is to enhance the safety of our students. In addition, this promotes the development of leadership skills and good citizenship qualities. A safety patrol’s job is to model for students the safety rules that have been taught in the classroom, to assist students in safe transitions throughout the building, and to assist teachers and staff with safety procedures during arrival and dismissal times. Patrols receive instructions in safety guidelines and procedures during their “on the job.” This requires a one year commitment from students. For more information contact Mrs. Shelley Spratlin.
S.A.L.T. is for Middle School girls to develop relationships with each other while serving MCCS and learning more about God. Activities include special speakers, special events as well as fun and games. SALT meets each Tuesday from 3:15-4:30. All Middle School girls are welcome to come when they can. Matthew 5:13a You are the salt of the earth. For more information contact Mrs. Kindy Moore.JetBrains has released PyCharm 3.0, an update to its integrated development environment for Python, in two versions - a paid-for Professional Edition and a free Community Edition. PyCharm is one of JetBrains' range of IDEs designed to increase developer productivity by providing coding assistance, code completion, one-the-fly code analysis, refactorings and debugging and test facilities. The others, including ones for Ruby, PHP, HTLM and JavaScript, are only available as commercial products. So why has JetBrains brought out a Community edition of PyCharm which is free and open source under Apache 2.0 license?
According to JetBrains its to do with the ways in which Python differs from other languages: Thanks to its non-proprietary nature, Python is generally preferred by the open source community. The language is widely used for scientific computing as well. As we are committed to supporting these communities, providing an advanced development tool for free such as PyCharm makes total sense. But more importantly, Python is becoming the de facto language of choice for teaching programming to beginners. With the price tag removed, those who start learning programming with Python today will have an immediate access to an intelligent IDE, which can guide them through their tasks, point out their mistakes, teach good practices, and generally make them better developers. So PyCharm Community Edition, which has "the essential functionality" of the IDE - syntax highlighting, code completion, error recognition, code search and more - is suitable for beginners and, JetBrains considers, will also come handy to those who use Python for lightweight coding or scripting tasks.
Meanwhile those who who use Python in production settings and need support for other frameworks and toolkits including Django, Flask, Google App Engine will need the Professional Edition, which offers a free 30-day trial. Among the new features in PyCharm 3.0 restricted to the Professional Edition are: This video gives an overview of new features in Version 3.0 for existing users of PyCharm: If you aren't an existing user and want to know about PyCharm's main features this earlier video provides an overview: Python is a language that really needs an easy to use IDE if only because it is increasingly used to teach people to program. Let's hope that the MOOCs that make use of Python start to use PyCharm and let's hope that the idea of a community edition is successful enough for JetBrains to want to extend it to their other languages. 2017 Summer Course Offerings There will be several economics courses taught this summer both online and on campus, including Econ 101, Econ 102, Econ 301, Econ 302, Econ 310, Econ 467 and Econ 522.