Our high school is a comprehensive four-year public high school enrolling 515 students in grades 9-12 on the coast of Maine. Close to 50% of the students qualify for the free or reduced-price lunch program. The students involved in this project consist of anywhere between 25 and 50 students, grades 9-12, members of the technology team, projects in engineering class, coding class and students with a love of technology and making things.
I believe that as General George S Patton said: "Never tell a person how to do something, but what and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." These students surprise me every day.
The students that enter the MakerSpace/STEAM classroom come for a variety of reasons. Some to complete projects to use in their class, some because they work with me on the technology team and love it, some because they want to explore different technologies and others because they find success in this space. Many of these students are Freshmen and students who learn best with hands-on projects.
My Project
The students will use these Raspberry Pi's for data collection in their Solve for Tomorrow Challenge. This will be the first time students will have worked with Raspberry Pis. It will give the students in the STEAM lab the opportunity to yet another technology to solve problems which will give them a good foundation for whatever comes after high school. I feel strongly that we need to expose our students to as many different learning situations as possible to get them to be good critical thinkers and problem solvers.
The challenge that the students will be working on is "how to provide internet access to all students at home".
Some of our students do not have access to the internet at home and that puts them at a disadvantage. Learning does not stop when the bell rings to go home. We want to level the playing field.
When the challenge is completed these Raspberry Pis will be used by my students for programming.
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