Extracurricular Activities

As part of our “whole student, whole success” strategy, MyEdMaster offers students exciting extra-curricular activities.  These activities are designed to help students develop new skills and experiences they normally would not have and build their resumes as they apply to colleges and elite high schools. We’ve learned that students need to stand out in life in order to get ahead, and our programs are designed to help students do just that.

AI-based educational software is a student-created technology company that creates educational software that uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, and voice technologies to enhance the learning process.  We are currently working on Algebra I and reading software.  Our immediate goal is to build a commercial software project for Algebra I. This is an accomplishment that most high school and middle schoolers do not achieve and we’ve seen many of our participating students get into Ivy League and other top colleges as well as Thomas Jefferson and Academies of Loudoun.  Academy of Engineering and Technology even told one of our students “We selected you because of your involvement with AI-based educational software.”  Students with interests in computer programming, developing math curriculum, creative writing, or business are welcome to participate.  We have an excellent team led by Dr. Leddo, who has worked in the field of AI and education for 30 years and Yihong Sun, an MBA.  They are complemented by the head of a small software development company (that is helping us develop the product), a professional product manager and two masters degree graduates of the computer science department of George Washington University and one from George Mason University.  Any parents who want to help mentor kids are welcome to participate as well.

To date, we have three outstanding success stories.  We have compared the effectiveness of our software against Khan Academy’s (the leading online educational software with over 10 million users) and Pearson Education’s (the world’s largest textbook publisher). Even though we had our students competing against leading companies, staffed with full-time professionals, our software won decisively both times.  Students using our software performed 80% higher than those using Khan Academy’s and 300% higher than those using Pearson’s.  Our results were published in several scientific journals and presented at an educational technology conference.  After beating Khan Academy, the students at AI-based educational software were hired by a local company to build an AI-based training system for cybersecurity for which they were paid. Many students received recognition for their success through these publications and commercial success, and, as I mentioned above, got rewarded by admissions to top colleges and elite high schools.

Tuition is the standard $37 per hour for tutoring.

Many of our students are interested in STEM careers.  The heart of STEM is research and sharing that research so others can build on the work.   While students in school learn the science we already know, professional scientists make new discoveries and share their findings by publishing in professional journals.  Our scientific research program teaches students how to do original research, then they conduct experiments and publish their findings in scientific journals. MyEdMaster created this program because most high school kids applying to college do not publish scientific papers and those who do typically get into top colleges, and we’ve seen no middle school student outside our centers publish scientific papers, so this creates an opportunity for our middle schoolers to stand out.  To date, we have had over 200 students successfully conduct research and publish their work in scientific journals.  Their papers have been read by some 60,000 scientists from around the world.  These kids are making a difference.  Many have published more than one paper, and we’ve seen as many as five publications from a single student by the time he applied to college.

The scientific research program is conducted like a mentorship program the way that university graduate schools do.  Dr. John Leddo, who has published more than 90 scientific papers himself, personally mentors each student throughout the entire process.  Together, the students have had some exciting success stories.  In addition to the projects described above where students created educational software that beat two industry leaders, other significant publications include:

Our scientific research program is conducted online on a tutoring basis throughout the school year or in-person at the Courtyard Marriott at 13715 Sayward Boulevard in Herndon any time from 1-5 pm. Tuition is $37 per hour.

From Saturday, 6/17/23 to Saturday, 8/19/2023, MyEdMaster will conduct a course in medical machine learning for beginning and experienced python programming students. Middle and high school students are welcome to enroll.

Previously, we have been working on creating a machine-learning-based product that will take the latest research in longevity and wellness and make personalized recommendations on what they can do to live longer and healthier. Students and parents indicated that they would like to continue working on this product.  We have achieved several important milestones:  we have collected and reviewed hundreds of scientific papers on wellness and longevity, we have created data science models to analyze and combine the results of these different papers, we have a machine learning model for calculating longevity given inputs on people’s current health and lifestyle, we are working on software that automatically retrieves and summarizes scientific articles on wellness and longevity, we have collected nutritional databases that will help the software analyze people’s diets, and we are collecting educational resources that will assess people’s progress and help them adhere to a program of wellness and longevity. We have also published peer-reviewed scientific papers of our work with the students’ names on them. We even have a four-center wellness clinic that is helping us collect data on people’s wellness interventions and outcomes, so that the software can improve its recommendations to its users.  Our project has attracted a lot of attention to the point where our professional team now numbers over 25 people in a variety of roles:  machine learning, data science, big data analysis, software development, databases, web-design and scientific research.

In this upcoming project, we will continue our efforts and work on creating machine learning models for updating people’s health and longevity plans based on their progress and outcomes as well as algorithms for updating the health and longevity models based on what works and doesn’t work for individual people.

Both the beginning and experienced classes will work on this product. To assist with the development of the product, all students will receive medical instruction from Dr. Taruna Agarwal, who has been the lead teacher of the previous medical machine learning classes.  Students will learn Python programming and machine learning basics from Hrithik Jain, a machine learning specialist. There are no prerequisites for joining this course.  All students are welcome.

This is an excellent opportunity for students to be taught by professionals, gain valuable skills in product development and build credentials for their high school and college applications. In addition to the product, we will also be creating professional scientific publications with students listed as authors for this as we’ve had for other sessions of this course.  Most students do not have the opportunity to be integral parts of building an actual commercial product or publishing scientific papers.  This experience will help students stand out, which is critical to gaining acceptance to elite and highly competitive programs.

We are pleased to offer another unique benefit to paying students who complete the course: the opportunity to share in the rewards of the product. We are currently in the process of setting up a separate company to market the eventual software and are working with a marketing company to build a sales strategy. Paying students who complete the course will receive a share of non-voting stock in the newly established company as a thank you for their help with the product. By giving students stock, we hope to give them the opportunity to see their hard work rewarded by becoming part owners of an enterprise they helped to create as well as have a credential they can put on their high school, college and eventual job applications:  they helped create a health-related software product and were co-owners of the company that was set up to market it.

This will be a 10-week course that meets virtually through Google Meet each Saturday.   The beginning Python group will meet from 8-10 am and the experienced Python group will meet from 10am-12 noon. The tuition is $425. You can register online at myedmaster.com or by emailing or calling John (john@myedmaster.com, 571-242-6986) or you can call or email John if you have any questions.

One of our most popular extra-curricular activities is TSA TEAMS, sponsored by the Technology Student Association.  TSA TEAM gives students a wide-ranging exposure to different activities such as mathematics, research and technical writing, public speaking, and hands-on building.  Students compete at both state and national levels in teams of four to eight students.  Typically, we compete in the middle school division and this is a great activity for students applying to Thomas Jefferson or Academies of Loudoun.  

The course is taught by a retired engineer, with assistance from Dr. Leddo.  We typically win the top spots at the state competition and to date, all of our teams have qualified for the national competition. In 2019, we won the top five places in Virginia and our teams won 8 medals at the national championship.

The state competition class runs from January to March and the national competition class runs from April to the beginning of July.