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
I teach Technology and Media Arts to K-8 students in a Creative & Performing Arts Academy. Our K-5th grade students learn a variety of art disciplines, including Dance, Drama, Visual Art, Music, and (Digital) Media Arts. Our 6th-8th grade students select a major to focus on for three years, where they routinely complete college level assignments.
The goal of my curriculum is to place real-world creative skills in the hands of my students.
We are a public school, but a magnet program. K-5 students are selected via a lottery. 6th-8th grade students audition for placement into their major.
My Project
I teach some level of coding, graphic design, audio editing, and video creation with all of my K-8 students, but some of our computers are not well equipped to handle all of these activities.
The Raspberry Pi is a super inexpensive but robust platform, with access to free programs that work with every part of my curriculum.
These will not be devices that are used for a single lesson per course before being packed away until next year. Rather, they will be used every day as my students gain more technology management knowledge and skills. The included software is simple enough that even my Kindergarten students will be able to make some use of it using services like code.org, though it will be my older students who are able to learn audio editing with Audacity, graphic design with Inkscape, video editing with OpenShot, and coding with the Raspberry Pi edition of Minecraft.
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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 Mr. Smith and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.