See It On The "Big Screen": LCD for HS Environmental Science

My Students: The vast majority of my students have never been outside the city we live in. To them, reading about rain forests and deserts is nothing but a tease. And because our classroom...

My Project: With an LCD projector, I can show students clips of howler monkeys screaming across the rain forest. I can show them actual clips of the amazing and weird creatures of the sea... more»

My Students: The vast majority of my students have never been outside the city we live in. To them, reading about rain forests and deserts is nothing but a tease. And because our classroom does not have easy access to an LCD projector, I have no way to show students video clips that will make them come alive.

My students are curious, and challenge me constantly about the material we are learning. Most of them come from the extremely poor urban neighborhood surrounding our school, and have no knowledge of the great outdoors. It was my experiences at their age traveling to other states and countries which inspired me to learn more about the science of the world around us, and they have not had the opportunity even to glimpse into it to see what it is like. We do our best to bring creativity into our discussions, and my kids are willing and able to use their imaginations to try to figure out what different parts of the world are all about, but as a public school in a rural area our options are limited for how to bring these things to life.

My Project: With an LCD projector, I can show students clips of howler monkeys screaming across the rain forest. I can show them actual clips of the amazing and weird creatures of the sea (right now their only knowledge of the sea is quite literally from Finding Nemo). They can follow investigative reporters as they report on resource scarcity and population growth and other issues that impact the Earth. I can show them how to do searches for "good" information over the Internet, and show them websites with interactive games and information. We can project their work up on the projector screen so they can do professional looking presentations for their classmates to build public speaking skills. In an era where young people learn primarily from digital media, it only makes sense that instruction should be accessed using as many modalities as possible, and using an LCD projector to meaningfully incorporate multimedia in the classroom would greatly further this goal in my classroom.

Funding this project will enable me to make our studies of environmental science come alive. We already spend time drawing, looking at pictures, and doing a lot of imagining, but if we had access to video we could really bring topics like biomes alive, and students who will probably never visit some of the places we study will at least have the opportunity to see them and marvel at their beauty. hide»