We need two laptops with graphic and video capability, 2 webcams and a case for our photography club to create public service announcement videos for our school and community.
My photography club recently learned to create their own website to share their photography and videos with others. I loved to watch the collaboration and engagement between students, no matter their level of coding experience. Students who had never coded were now fully engaged and loving it.
When the students in my photography club started trying to upload high quality images, videos and animated gifs into their websites (which first had to be saved to a file on the computer), they encountered slow running and uploading times on the laptops we are using, which ended up not loading due to timing out. Our school tech person told us the laptops we currently have are as fast as needed for uploading videos. My students suggested getting new, faster laptops by submitting a student-led project to DonorsChoose.org. They are partnered up with our local high school to share their club work through distance learning, but they cannot do that until they can load (quickly) their videos and websites and have the websites run fast from our location, which is not always in a classroom where desktops are readily available.
First, even though this project is coming from a photography club, the use of coding to build their own photography websites is a skill many can use in high school and beyond. Coding for photography can lead to so many opportunities for many of them who otherwise would never get the experience.
Second, the confidence they are gaining by doing coding here has already started to boost their problem-solving and analytical skills. They are more than happy to share their new photography skills and want to display their work on their website, and I do not want that momentum to fade away.
Third, by video-conferencing with the high school many of them will be attending soon, they are already building interpersonal skills. They will strengthen their communication skills (listening, speaking) and learn to constructively critique other's work when they are skyping with the high school, exchanging their work.
In Their Own Words
Ishwari and Sonika (lead students in our photography club) wrote: "Our new photography club at school is being built from the ground up. It is not just about taking pictures, but learning what to do with those pictures. We are learning to create websites where each of us can post our photography work and videos and skype with our high school photo club. Our current laptops are too slow. We need laptops with faster processors and video cards to accomplish our goals of being able to do this.
We have already helped our club members learn to code and what we liked best was watching them see how their websites started to take shape. Many were upset when their videos or gifs would not load in club time, and could not do it at home, so they wanted to give up on having videos on their websites. With laptops with faster processors, we can quickly teach all members how to code and upload their work to their websites in time to be able to share it with our high school photo club via Skype.
Everyone at our school is excited about the new photography club. As the leaders of the first year of the club, we want to set a standard for the club and what new members can expect to be able to learn and do. We want to be the trailblazers in using technology (not just photography) and use it to highlight the wonderful things at our school and community to a global audience. We want to be the teacher and help our members all learn how to expand their websites from just photos and words to more.
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. Ibarra and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
