A typical day in our media center involves a constant flow of 6th - 12th grade students visiting for entire class periods to conduct various levels of research such as basic secondary research leading to primary research with academic journals.
According to Albert Einstein, “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” Because we serve a wide variety of students in grades 6th-12th, this quote applies to our media center in multiple ways.
Many of our students, particularly at the middle school level, need basic research skills to be repeatedly taught and reinforced. Others are highly motivated to perform high level research but need the resources and time on task to sharpen their skills. With the addition of twelve Transformer Tablets, we can better serve both of these demographics.
My Project
By the end of the academic year, we would like our students to be efficient in completing multiple levels of research under varying degrees of supervision. To accomplish this, we strive to teach research skills that will generate self-actualized students. In many ways, our media center has become a studio classroom where students conduct guided investigations. Our biggest challenges involve a lack of adequate resources to truly implement the small group, studio classroom model. While we have desk-top work stations, we often lack the quantity to adequately serve all of our students. In addition, the lack of portability is increasingly an issue because small group projects are better facilitated with the flexibility to gather in pertinent locations.
We have found in recent years that our curriculum has become increasingly focused on small group research projects.
As a result, our media center has increasingly become a focal point for research due to the availability of both Internet and traditional resources. If we are awarded this grant for 12 ASUS Transformer Tablets, it will make a monumental difference in allowing us to transition our media center to a research studio for our 6th – 12th grade 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 Mrs. Atherton and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.