Technology Teaches

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

School is the one place where students should be able to check their poverty at the door, and have the same opportunities as everyone else. Well, that's how it's supposed to be, but in reality, this isn't always the case. I teach second grade reading, language arts, and social studies, and environmental science to 44 incredibly bright and deserving students. We don't have a computer lab in our school. We have computers in the library, but if you want to do a class technology lesson, it has to be worked in with the librarians schedule, who has library classes for the entire school to hold. Since I teach one class in the morning and one in the afternoon, it limits my possibilities.

Most of my students are on free lunch. Most don't have a computer at home, and their exposure to the world of technology, depends on their experiences at school. It's been my experience that the earlier you can introduce children to different things, especially technology, the quicker they sponge it up.

I would like my students to benefit through the use of exciting new technology, as so many others have and possibly take for granted. I would like them to be introduced to the powerful world that computers open up. With the use of a laptop, we could borrow a projector and have access to the amazing opportunities United Streaming has to offer. United Streaming is a program that offers Streaming Videos on every topic, ages K-12. With the use of a laptop, these videos could be shown on a wall instead of a twelve inch screen. We could use an ELMO to view teaching pages that we formerly had to make transparencies to show, that is when the transparency portion of the copier was working.

I want the world for my students. I want to open up the world for my students. I want my students to be able to put their hands on a laptop and see the differences between it and a desktop. I want them to experience technology first hand, in the one place where above all else, things should be equal.