Bring my classroom into the 21st century! Technology is an integral part of everything we do each day and should no longer be thought of as a separate discipline in education, or a luxury item in our public schools. Technology as simple as an in focus projector can help to close the achievement gap.
My students are from a large diverse urban school district in Massachusetts.
54% of our students qualify for the free and reduced lunch program. Our middle school is 7/8 and has 900 students. My class size is 28-30 students, and I teach 102 students total. We have 200 English language learners and a large special education program. My students are inquisitive and love to explore science through hands on experiences in the many labs that we do. They are visual learners as well as tactile learners and need the connections that vivid animations and videos will provide. Without a classroom budget, the laboratory experiments we do are limited by my personal budget. Although I can be very creative with household items, nothing speaks louder than a video about a cold fusion reaction in action, or images from the Hubble space probe, or real time readings of tectonic activity on the USGS website.
My Project
Having an in focus projector will revolutionize my ability to be an effective and intentional educator. The ability to project science related images, videos and animations will allow students who lack significant scientific prior knowledge to gain access to a world outside of their small city. Most of my students have never been to a museum or even for a hike to experience science in their natural world. It is proven that using multiple modalities to present content will actively engage students to make connections with content and build background knowledge. I have also created a classroom moodle site-an interactive web portal that students can go to for classroom notes, power point presentations, videos and to engage in blog style conversations that I can use as an assessment tool. With a projector in my classroom I will be able to actually show the power point notes, graphic organizers, videos and pictures on my moodle sight.
My project is so important because I need a more visually appealing way to keep all of my students engaged in a technology dependent and digital world.
Middle schoolers are used to exciting digital imagery that they do not interact with in their classrooms. A projector cuts the need for paper based reproducibles that are not in budget. My students deserve to be exposed to current scientific discoveries not included in their texts. A projector will allow greater content access to ALL 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. Halligan and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
