Enhance Critical Thinking with 21st Century Skills
My students need to engage with iPad based technologies in order to enhance their 21st Century skills and be better prepared for their college & career paths.
Carl Sagan, American astronomer, claims that "We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology." As such, teachers must help students learn how to best engage with available technologies so as to have a positive impact upon our world.
My students live in a growing suburban community in central Oklahoma.
Such growth has infused our once homogeneous community with greater diversity. While we do have pockets of affluence, most of my students come from working class, lower to moderate income families. It is within this backdrop that my students' lives were suddenly changed on May 20, 2013. Approximately 40% of them were directly impacted by a violent tornado and were displaced due to serious damage or destruction to their homes. Despite facing significant life obstacles, they have returned to school committed to academic excellence and I want to help harness that spirit. To help motivate their drive for success I want to provide increased opportunities for them to have not only the curricular content knowledge for success in life, but also the skills, especially 21st Century technology based skills, necessary to continue helping them overcome life's obstacles and gain the best in life.
My Project
With an iPad mini in our classroom my students will be able to learn, practice, and develop 21st Century skills which they do not yet have. A variety of applications, or "apps", will be used to facilitate my students' learning. TouchCast and iMovie will allow them to create visually and auditorily engaging summaries of our curriculum. Prezi and SlideShark will help them make and share stimulating presentations. Idea Sketch and Evernote will promote organizing ideas for communication in written essays or public presentations. Several of these apps, along with others, will help to further their collaboration with others. My ultimate goal is that the technologies available through this iPad mini will help 1) to take the curriculum content to an in-depth level, 2) to create activities which stimulate greater collaboration with peers, and 3) to help increase my student's abilities and confidence levels in the use of 21st Century technology skills to that they are college and career ready.
Will you partner with me?
Will you help to insure my students are confident in their abilities to use 21st Century technologies? Will you help me to help my students be as ready as possible for their college and career paths? The devastating tornado of May 20, 2013 brought new challenges to my students' lives; your generous gift will contribute to an education that will not only help them to overcome this life tragedy, but to also have a meaningful impact on their college and career paths.
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