My Wisconsin high school has a growing population of students taking college prep English due to our successes in working with students who have not taken the college-prep track. Next year, we will have over 150 of these students who have special needs because they come unprepared for college success. I will have the lion's share of those students in my classroom. In addition, the number of students with learning disabilities grows annually, providing me with challenges and opportunities to teach students. This influx of students does not come with additional funds to help meet their educational needs. In fact, with record state budget cuts last year and expected again this year, our resources have dwindled. What we lack financially we make up for in innovation.
Buying books is always a financial challenge. As class sizes grow and room space shrinks, access to and storage of books often lies beyond the reach of my limited resources. The Sony Reader Touch Edition is an amazing tool that addresses many aspects of need for a 21st century student learning to read. The Reader uses an E Ink® technology that’s almost paper-like, making it easy to read. In addition, the screen allows for high contrast and high resolution, and the text can also be magnified for student comfort. In addition, it provides the ability to use the speech component to assist struggling readers, the portability and possibility of connecting and downloading to computers. This means endless, incredible possibilities to my students. Sony Reader can spark a student’s interest in reading and engage them in worlds otherwise inaccessible to them -- and all in a hand-held device at the cutting edge of technology. The Sony Reader brings an entire library to students. Online bookstores sell e-books for a fraction of the cost of printed texts. This means more bang for our buck.
The Sony Reader will bring an entire library to my classroom and help readers with its speech/text recognition features. One small tool can provide access to an endless supply of text and information. This tiny device can have an impact on student motivation to read. It offers independence with the text recognition features, and it also provides the ability to highlight text and add notes for comments and questions. A simple movement with the slide of a finger lets you easily turn pages or activate the bookmark. It also features a virtual keyboard that can be used for quick annotation or search. State standards have added a entire section dedicated to improving reading skills and helping students become lifelong readers and learners. Providing students with this option will play upon their love of technology to get them to embrace reading. While print books will never die, for our techno-savvy students, they are going out of style. With Sony Reader, students can read in a comfortable corner and enjoy a good book, and the Reader can hold an almost infinite number of books.
Reading is the key to any person’s hope of future success, and we must encourage and motivate students to become lifelong readers and learners. This project provides an opportunity to take advantage of current technology to change the way we reach our students. We need to go beyond the cell phones and abbreviated text messages. We need to engage them in the activity of interactive reading and reading relevant texts. I anticipate seeing many schools moving to these digital readers. Sony is donating one million of them to high-poverty schools across the country. I hope to use this project as a stepping-stone to improve instruction for my students. I’d like to see how this project elevates college preparedness for my 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 Mr. S. and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.