Did you have a chalk board in class growing up? Was it your job to wipe it clean at the end of the day and erase all of the hard work and information on it? My class had the chance to have an infinite chalk board. One that will never lose our work and never run out of room for new information.
My class is composed of 19 second graders, of all abilities, crammed into a tiny classroom.
Our walls have virtually no open space any more due to all of the district requirements for posters and information to display, not to mention grade level and administration requirements for students work to be displayed. Even my white board is mostly covered by the projector screen that is needed for my projector. My students are extremely tech savvy for such a young age and use Google Chrome books every day to take AR tests, research projects and complete district and state assessments. They are constantly asking for the next big tech item! However, even with all of this technology I am forced to rely on them to take notes from our lessons. They are much too young to accurately copy from the board, and I cannot leave the information up there indefinitely. We have been making charts and posters, but with the lack of wall space the only place left is to start hanging our work on the ceiling.
My Project
When you are in a meeting at work you take notes from the white board the presenter is using. No matter how good of a note taker you are somehow your information just doesn't seem to compare with what was originally created. What if you had the ability to get the exact information that was first created the next day, or week, or month? What if that information could be saved and printed out for you? With this project my kids will have the ability to access copies of our collective work, take home examples of their individual work, and as a teacher I can post images and examples of what is being done in class on our web page so parents can now see exactly what is happening in their students' classroom. Space is no longer an issue because with the EBeam software I can simply save what was on the board, erase it, and then pull it back up the next day.
These materials are important because we live in a digital age and our instruction should reflect that.
The students should be able to produce work, not merely for that moment, but to be accessed all year long.
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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. Boucher and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
