Help me give my students a spontaneous and immersive virtual learning experience! An iPad will let me draw, troubleshoot and research on the fly, without interrupting the precious facetime my cherubs and I have during synchronous learning!
My students are compassionate, thoughtful children with curious minds and lots of love to give. They support each other through challenging situations, and they are astute enough to detect even minor changes in mannerisms from adults. Needless to say, 2020 has been overwhelming for many of them.
Each of my students have different learning challenges at home that make virtual school less joyful and effective than we would like.
Some have to share technology with siblings, and some periodically lose Internet access. Many have been left in the care of relatives who can't really help with our content or with technology issues, and some are without any caregiver at all during their virtual learning days.
Their affectionate nature as a whole made it so easy to bond with them at the beginning of our school year. We are truly a community. We do everything we can to make learning fun during a year that has been anything but. Your help with this project will ensure that my kids' buoyant personalities continue to keep us all above water in the toughest school year any of us have ever seen.
My Project
There is really no substitute for a whiteboard. Even though I've said, "I'm no artist," a thousand times before drawing stick figures to illustrate a concept, the practice never loses its efficacy. But I can't do that virtually -- not on my laptop, anyway.
These items will help me illustrate challenging concepts and present reference images for my students as they try to understand 6th grade in a really weird world.
With my current technology, I can't illustrate anything -- and trying to load images during a Zoom is unreliable at best. If someone is having technology trouble, I have to cross my fingers and hope they can hear me -- because navigating away to look for an answer just isn't an option.
This technology will help me reach my learners who need to SEE what I'm talking about. It will help me model for them. But in a virtual environment where only one person can be speaking, connections are unstable, and video conferences freeze up like a Flinstones Push Up pop, I have been severely limited in what I can entertain during a lesson. Not only will I be able to troubleshoot with these items without interrupting a lesson, this project will also deliver us more of those wonderful sidebars where so much real life learning happens.
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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 Ms. Johnson and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.