Our school's science classes are somewhat unique when compared to standard science classes. As our school is an arts integrated school, students are often asked to use their artistic abilities to demonstrate their understandings of scientific concepts in addition to traditional methods.
Our student body is very unique, arriving from every background imaginable, yet eager not to let their socioeconomic backgrounds hold them back from succeeding.
Seventy percent of our students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. However, they are motivated to learn and are effective in coping with our rigorous class and department standards. Most are not afraid to seek help when needed, and many of our top performing students actively participate in our after-school tutoring programs. They are also excited to learn science through hands-on labs and will take advantage of opportunities to discover beyond traditional lab assignments.
My Project
The Chromebooks requested in this DonorsChoose.org project have the potential to greatly expand science students’ educational experience here at HFAA. For example, publically available scientific reference materials and scientific modeling applications are increasingly available online. Such examples include PubMed, Gene, and ChemBank. Teaching students how to navigate and utilize such databases and modeling programs will greatly increase students’ access to credible and current information that students can use to answer many scientific questions.
Obtaining the Chromebooks will also give students access to a plethora interactive digital tutorials and learning games that connect with all students’ learning styles.
For example, there are many tutorial animations that can bring life complex processes such as DNA replication, transcription, and translation. Games accessible through Anatomy Arcade make the monotony of memorizing anatomical body parts fun and exciting. Thus, in conjunction with expert teacher instruction, hands-on labs, the animations along with endless content summaries and self-testing found on online tutorials, and the excitement of learning games, the Chromebooks will greatly brighten our student learning.
The examples above as to how obtaining Chromebooks will facilitate learning science are a few of many. Just as important as the books are to the science learning process is the realization that the world is increasingly going digital. The digital age will require student computer literacy to compete for jobs in the future. As such, having a classroom set of Chromebooks to be shared between our science departments would greatly facilitate student competitiveness as students would get early practice with applications used regularly in college and the business world.
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
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 Dr. Schuerch and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
