This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
My Students
The most important lesson we are trying to teach our students is that learning comes from themselves as well as from the adults around them. We want the children to become adept at finding their own answers and in today's world, that means using technology.
We have a very mixed student population.
We have children from other countries who come in with little or no English. We have children with very few resources at home and we have children who come from very comfortable homes. Our two classes, morning and afternoon, are both mixed racially and ethnically. This is true for our whole school which is in a middle class neighborhood.
A little more than half our children came in as 3-year-olds and the rest as 4-year-olds. Some have had a lot of contact with books, computers, playing outdoors, and being with other children. Some have had almost none of these.
Our school is over 100 years old. We have a large outdoor campus, which we use extensively. We have two playgrounds and several gardens that the preschoolers help with. The school goes to 7th grade and will go to 8th grade next year, so our afternoon preschoolers enjoy having big kid buddies.
My Project
I have not always been a fan of computers in a classroom for young children. Too often computers are used for babysitting or rote memory activities. Having ipads in the classroom can give us a different kind of computer experience because of the Apps that are available for us. Our idea is to integrate the ipads into the various learning centers so that they are one more tool for children to learn from and share their learning.
For example, there is a book-making app that allows children to integrate photographs, drawings, text (written by them or dictated to an adult), and voice. They can then share this book with other children and with their families in either print or digital form.
Another App I am excited to try is one that creates QR codes. We can use this when we act out stories children have written. The stories can be displayed in print form on the bulletin board with the QR code directing parents to the video of the performance.
I believe this project will make a difference because we will be working to take technology out of the realm of mindless games only and teaching children creative uses for it.
In other words, instead of learning about technology being an end in itself, we will be teaching children to see it as tools for creativity and learning. Hopefully using ipads creatively will be more fun for them than using them for repetitive games and activities.
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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. Averill and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.