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Mrs. Consterdine from Ukiah CA is requesting technology through DonorsChoose, the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.

A Brain for the Tin Man...

My students need one Windows-based laptop they can share to write and upload programs for their Mindstorm NXT robots.

  • $491 goal

Hooray! This project is fully funded

Hooray! This project is fully funded

My Students

My amazing middle school students form a diverse community of Caucasian, Hispanic, Native American, African-American, and Asian students who are determined to "beat the odds" to reach their educational goals and prepare for their future. Our community is not very affluent and many students have little access to technology at home. Regardless, we strive to instill in each student, especially those in our at risk population, a joy of life-long learning, technological literacy, and life and leadership skills to prepare them for college and career.

Our seventh and eighth grade classes are made up of 40 hard-working students, many of whom come from bilingual households and receive free or reduced price lunch.

We have a fantastic group of learners who need your help to take their learning to the next level. We want to learn and apply coding skills to Lego Mindstorm robots we are building.

My Project

We need a new laptop for our robotics programming. My students need your help getting a shared laptop so they can practice computer programming skills by writing and uploading software for robots . "Wow, that's cool. What does it do?" is the first thing students say as they choose a robot to build. We are lucky to have 2 new Mindstorms kits through DonorsChoose as well as 4 older kits on loan from another school. But we do not have the capability to write and upload programs to control our robots. Last year, students used my ancient personal laptop with limited success, lots of frustration and wasted time.

Your generous donation to our project will improve our middle school classroom by helping students literally bring their robots to life with coding skills using a new Window-based laptop.

With your help, our budding engineers will be able to take their robots to the next step, successfully writing programs to control the sensors and motors that enable the robots to perform required tasks. Advanced students can then go further by modifying the hardware ("bones) of their robot, as well as the programs ("mind").

The result? Hands-on learning, with lots of room for experimentation where mistakes are integral to the learning process and persistence flourishes, as students are very motivated to succeed. Adding programming this year is an awesome way to make math and physics relevant for students at all levels as they discover together what works and what doesn't.

In this technology literate world, access to one new Windows-based laptop will help our students learn how to write code!

Mrs. Consterdine
Grades 6-8

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Where Your Donation Goes

Materials Cost Quantity Total
Amazon's Choice - Home - Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575-33BM 15.6-Inch FHD Notebook (Intel Core i3-7100U 7th Generation , 4GB DDR4, 1TB 5400RPM HD, Intel HD Graphics 620, Windows 10 Home), Obsidian Black • Amazon Business $349.99 1 $349.99

Materials cost

$349.99

Vendor shipping charges

FREE

Sales tax

$32.02

3rd party payment processing fee

$5.25

Fulfillment labor & materials

$30.00

Total project cost

$417.26

Suggested donation to help DonorsChoose reach more classrooms

$73.63

Total project goal

$490.89

How we calculate what's needed

Total project goal

$490.89

1 Donor

-$490.89

Donations toward project cost

-$417.26

Donations to help DonorsChoose reach more classrooms

-$73.63

Still needed View calculationHide calculation

$0.00

Our team works hard to negotiate the best pricing and selections available.

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Project Activity

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