Next Meeting: Board meeting (Open to All Members) January 15. 2025, online at noon. Note the change in meeting Day  and time to Wednesday noon for this meeting!

 

January 9th, Pam and Andy have invited Club members, families, and friends to a Potluck social at their home in Eliot. They are making meatballs, due to allergies in the Club , please, no shellfish. 5 pm

 

On the 9th the Club is also providing  support for Table of Plenty, 3-5 pm.

 

Club members are reminded that the Rotary Clubs of Kittery are jointly supplying rotating commodities to Footprints Food Pantry, during January we are collecting coffee - either ground or Instant. Collection will continue for the next couple of weeks. This month Footprints will be preparing for their transition to the Mainspring Collective Building at the end of the month.

 

We still have a few of the 2025 Calendars available for sale. These are available for $20 and all the funds raised go toward service projects for the coming year. Treasurer Andy reports, with the latest returns, we have netted $4460 for Service Work from this project.

 

On January 19, 11am -1pm the District is holding a Mid-Year Brunch Focused on the Youth Programs of our District. open to all members to hear and discuss activities and opportunities for expanding programs Hilton Garden Inn, Freeport, ME

 

Club Youth Exchange - Dave reports that Makili Matty has withdrawn his application and is planning to attend Colby College next year; Jackson Guay has submitted an application to the District for a long term Youth Exchange (10 month) and the District has asked if we will consider sponsoring Jackson and hosting an incoming student for the 2025-2026 year. Final confirmation of sponsorship is pending Rotary Interview and Club President signature . A motion was made by Pam to both the sponsor of Jackson and host of an incoming student in return, and the Club approved.  Dave will notify the District Chair and the application process can proceed.

 

5050 Raffle: Sue had the raffle ticket drawn today and the chance at the $316     "Pot".

 

Unfortunately, Sue selected the Queen of Clubs! The deck is smaller and the "Pot" will grow.

(Sue has a birthday Friday! Happy Birthday Sue!)

 

Eric Waddell (Club member and also Superintendent, Kittery School District) was our speaker this morning and talked to us about AI (artificial intelligence) programs in the schools.  As Eric related, some of the initial reaction to the increase in AI use was to ban or restrict usage in education systems. However, AI has become a fact of life and is now incorporated into the academic environment with both teachers and students being trained on how to use programs and to understand the limitations of use, as well as how to detect improper use.

Eric talked about how AI is used by shopping programs to present ads focused on the user's interests, how music programs learn listeners preferences and build playlists to suit. Eric wrote a request for a letter addressing a local building project and demonstrated how the programs rapidly search the internet for background data and generated a letter which incorporated the correct format, pertinent facts, and implied concerns.

Since the information drawn by the programs from the whatever is on the internet, the information may be incomplete or contradictory; the students have to learn to review the products carefully and back up the results with their own research. Eric also talked about the tools that were available to teachers to determine if work submitted by students is totally program generated of not. 

 

Andy took all of this to heart and went home and asked ChatGPT to generate a nice thankyou note to Eric, it did a very good job!

 

Thank you Eric.

 

Eric signed a book to be donated in his

name to the school libraries in thanks for

being our speaker this morning