Today's world is fast paced and digital. It is quite hard to grab students' attention throughout the day, and a device such as an iPad is great way to help. There are countless apps that match our Social Studies, Science, and Language Arts programs that can be used in various ways.
We have a low socioeconomic and an ethnically diverse population of students at our school site.
The students are extremely engaged and excited when it comes to technology, which many do not have it at home. California schools are very impacted due to low budget funds, and technology is very low on the list of priorities. We do not have computers in our classrooms, beyond a teacher computer, and having a lack of technology in our classrooms is a giant shortfall in our educational system. Having at least one iPad in the classroom is a good start at incorporating the modern world in our program, and can help inspire students to look beyond the the world of textbooks, and see there are many interactive ways to learn and discover.
My Project
The activities and apps we will download and use are endless. There are apps for the Thirteen Colonies, where students can see, hear, and read about life in each colony. Apps dealing with other time periods (we study ancient Greece and the Roman Empire in 6th grade). For science, there are apps where you can actually see the other planets in 3D. We can compare and contrast many subjects through usage of multimedia sources, and there is even a National Archive app for primary source documents (which is part of our newly implemented Common Core Standards).
All of this is literally at the tip of our fingers, and can be projected (I have a LCD projector) for all to see and be a part of.
It is essentially important for children to become technologically literate, and schools in this area are not providing the tools for them to achieve this.
Having an iPad in the classroom is a start, and will help not only enrich my students' education, but help them be competent with modern technology.
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