It has been the honor of my life thus far to serve as music teacher for a few hundred of our state's best and brightest. I'm challenged daily by their deep, creative questions and zeal for new knowledge. Our students are safe, respectful, responsible, and engaged leaders in the classroom.
Our students' aptitude consistently challenges me to push them to set higher goals and dig deeper in their understandings.
They make work easy and fun. Socio-economically speaking, they come from a mix of home environments and resource availability.
My Project
Here at HES we utilize any resource available to better reach the needs of our students. One resource I've yet to utilize is the touch sensitivity of a tablet. The advent of the tablet should and will revolutionize how students learn the basics of music. Allowing the students access to a personal touch screen during music class would enable such activities as creating music videos, working in small groups to form iPad ensembles, and using GarageBand to create accompaniments for original compositions. As an avid gamer, gamification is a pedagogical technique I use frequently and it would only be bolstered by the enormous, fun, and educational library of music/rhythm games available exclusively on iPads.
The advantages of classroom iPads aren't confined to the classroom, the experiences easily transfer to household devices where students can practice/play until their hearts (and their parents' eardrums) are full.
I fully expect our students to take advantage of their home screen time writing and creating new compositions that we can share and build upon in class.
The iPads and charging cart would become property of the school and will be used by hundreds of students in the music class.
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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. Canosa and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
