My school is a Title I public K-8 outside Portland, OR. We have just under 1,000 students from mostly low socio-economic backgrounds. Our poverty level is a little over 80%. In addition, our students come from homes with 47 different home languages giving us a high percentage of students who are English Language Learners (ELL's). Despite these challenges, we are the highest performing Title I school in the district!
Our kids come to our school with a world of opportunities in front of them, and it is up to us to help them see what they are capable of.
My Project
If there's one thing I've learned from working with kids (of all ages, even the really big ones we call adults), it's that the more ways you can explain an idea, the more deeply you can help someone understand what you are teaching. At a school like ours where so many kids are still working hard to fully comprehend the English language, visual and audio examples are extremely important. Text just simply isn't enough. A tablet like the iPad, when equipped with tools like the Pencil and the keyboard, becomes an extremely powerful way to convey complicated information. For example, imagine you wanted to teach a lesson about how valleys are formed...
To teach how valleys are formed, you could project the iPad onto a screen at the front of the class, show an introductory video, then switch over to google earth to show Yosemite valleys glacially carved domes, then switch over to the Notability app to draw (using the pencil) a picture of how the ice would break up the rock.
The ability to efficiently and seamlessly switch between different apps and different forms of media is an extremely powerful tool which helps all learners understand complicated ideas. And there are more apps, websites, and peripherals which continue to come out all the time. With so much knowledge out there, it's crucial to stay technologically up-to-date.
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