This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
My Students
My STEM classroom is part of a STEM smaller learning community within our high school that prepares students for challenging, college-preparatory science, math, and engineering courses. Our students are primarily low-income students of different ethnicities who dream of college diplomas. Through project-based learning to understand complex problems and to prepare our next generation of innovators, our mission is to facilitate creative thinking through collaborative innovation.
My students are awesome; they are curious, creative, innovative and push themselves to learn.
I believe my job as a teacher is to develop fun, challenging and innovative experiences that integrate a wide variety of technology and integrate STEM activities whenever possible with a special focus on making STEM concepts accessible to females, minority students and children from bilingual and low-income families. Our STEM small learning community has an impact on over 400 students, growing at a rate of approximately 50% per year. We recruit high-potential students, most of whom are low-income and underrepresented. All of our students demonstrate academic motivation and potential, and all face significant obstacles to realizing their aspirations.
My Project
The Ozobot curriculum was designed to support Next Generation Science Standards and can also be used to integrate learning across subject areas to encourage a deeper level of inquiry and understanding. Students will begin by hands-on exploration of robots performing real world applications built with the same programming tools with which they will be working. Next, students will be introduced to the intuitive, block-based coding foundation behind the robotic commands. Students will be challenged to deconstruct and rebuild the code to improve the robots’ functionality. As students advance, they will progress to leveraging more complex concepts like variables, functions, loops, logic and conditional statements. Students will also be empowered to create new applications that fully leverage Ozobot optical and proximity sensors to react to its environment.
"An Investment in Knowledge Pays the Best Interest" -Benjamin Franklin.
Computer programming skills are pervasive throughout environmental science, as evidenced by the range of quantitative areas that employ some level of programming (e.g., watershed hydrology, natural resource economics, water quality management, atmospheric chemistry, energy systems) and by the demand for these skills in the workforce.
I would use the Ozobot curriculum to teach environmental science. We would investigate the effects of design and technological activities on the environment, taking into account both positive and negative impacts on the Earth and its resources. Students will be able to use the whole STEM approach with this project. They will have to plan, design, test and modify the robot as needed. Not only will this project teach my students the importance of Environmental Science, it also lets them use robotics technology to create a lasting impression in their minds. This project will create environmentally aware citizens for the future. Thank you for making a difference in my students lives.
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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. Cobb and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
