My students need a microphone to facilitate Skype videoconferencing sessions with volunteers from around the world to promote global awareness.
$335 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
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.
Having been through the first day of school several times, I am always surprised and alarmed to find students in my classroom who do not speak any English at all or are so shy they cannot even look a teacher in the eye.
Their unease stems from the fact that typically teachers will pass these students along without trying to help or to get their attention through activities specifically geared towards their interests.
Last year, I used Skype in my classroom to do videoconferences with colleagues in Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Peru and China. Our Spanish class was taught by the Spaniard - specifically how to flamenco dance. We learned some basic Chinese from another colleague, which is great because we offer Chinese at our school. Our students are encouraged to pursue personal interests and if they do not know how to go about doing so, they ask us.
Many students loved speaking with my friends from around the world, and still talk about it this year. But the problem with that is whenever a student had a question, they had to walk up to my laptop, lean down and ask the question.
My Project
The shy children would never get out of their seats and the extroverts completely took over. It was also difficult for the people with whom we were conversing to hear when the children got so close to my laptop. Having a microphone would allow the conversation to extend to more students in the classroom and allow the person with whom we are speaking to see the entire class, making it more of a "guest" speaker feel.
It is imperative that we get a system in place to facilitate Skype videoconferencing in the classroom.
As a global school, we need to have as much access to people from around the world and Skype certainly seems the way to go. A microphone is just one step on the way to making our world a little more accessible for our students.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Ms. Straub and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
