Help me give my students an interactive website, created and maintained with a MacBook and iPad, full of publicly available lecture videos that they can access for self-paced, individualized math instruction at the tip of their fingers!
JLHS is a very diverse school with students from many ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. In addition to having a very multicultural student body, James Logan is also one of the largest public high schools in Northern California, with just under 4000 students. Due to the increasingly large number of students who are English Language Learners (ELLs) at James Logan, our school has developed a special program within the school, called the Sheltered Program, that allows these students to be in smaller classes that are specifically for ELLs. Classes within the Sheltered Program include math, English, and history. I am fortunate enough to have worked within the Sheltered Program since starting at James Logan six years ago.
Working with English Language Learners has not only been the most rewarding experience of my teaching career, but has also expanded my pedagogical knowledge in a profound way.
This population of students is the most loyal and hardworking group of students I have ever met, and they never cease to amaze me with what they can achieve. Therefore, it is my goal to provide my students with the best chance to succeed, both academically and outside of the classroom.
My Project
A few years ago, I started developing my website and YouTube channel for my high school math classes. What started out as a simple place for me to post homework assignments has grown into a resource used not only by students at my school, but also students across the United States! Using a combination of my MacBook Air and my iPad, I have created and publicly posted full years of lecture videos for courses including Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, and Precalculus, which I link with practice problems and activities to supplement learning. I am extremely reliant on my laptop to maintain and create new content for my website. Unfortunately, my 5-year-old MacBook Air is on its last leg, greatly affecting my ability to improve and grow my website.
One of the biggest benefits of my interactive website and lecture videos is that I am able to better differentiate instruction to students of all skill levels because they can learn or reinforce material at their own pace by pausing, fast-forwarding, or re-watching certain examples or explanations multiple times; Perhaps the even bigger benefit is the sheer number of students I have been able to help.
It is not uncommon for students whom I have never met to tell me they watch my videos every night. I have received emails from teachers in other states telling me how helpful their students have found my website. In fact, one of my videos has almost 100,000 views on YouTube and has been watched by high school math students all over the country. A new MacBook Air would mean that I could continue to update, maintain, and add to the vast resources on my website and YouTube Channel and hopefully reach more and more students each day!
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