Well, in all my free time I've created a
Donor's Choose project to augment the technology in my classroom. My students really need to be able to create, compose, and publish on the internet. I would like to have a class blog for some of our literature responses and argumentative assignments next year and my students this year (2013-2014) wanted to as well.
Our hold up was, well it was mostly due to planning time on my part since it was my first year at this school. I'd like to blame the equipment, but that's not the full picture. We could have done most of what I want to do--writing, drafting, collaborative revision, commenting, etc.--with my current technology setup; however, it would have been slow to say the least.
We currently have 3 classroom computers to use, a fourth one if I can free up a shared laptop for the day. Even with my reduced class sizes I had 12 students in my largest classes and that would still take 4 rotations to get all the students on to computers for typing. While that's ok for shorter writing assignments or surveys (see my
previous post, the data for which I gathered using two of our computers hot-seat style after exams), it is tedious for research papers or longer assignments when the needs of my students require that some of them are typing for two or three times as long as other students.
Donor's Choose only lets you start out with a small project at first until you get enough "points" to allow a larger dollar amount for your projects. This, I assume, weeds out the weaker hearts, and indeed kept me out last year when I created the account and drafted half a similar project for my last classroom. Even with this small number of points--and therefore a small "budget"--I am able to fund a huge boost in capacity for my classroom: Three Chrome book laptops for my room will double the available number of screens for students to use and cut in half the time it takes for computer projects in the room. Not to mention the classroom management impact! Easier planning for me, I hope.
Upon the successful funding of this project, I believe I will be able easily to plan and implement some engaging and fun lessons with our new English curriculum which will cover Antigone and Things Fall Apart next year. Look for a class blog on here and, at the very least, some published student examples of peer edited and revised, polished, college prep writing.
Here's the link to my teacher page on Donor's Choose:
Link
Yes, it's the same as above--I'm trying the best I can since the project expires in 4 months.
