Donor's Choose Project -- 3 new chromebooks

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.

Another Round of Room Preparations

More Cleanup

We went in to campus again on Friday to push around the furniture and finish cleaning the messy spots.  By lunch time, I had room 105 looking good enough to hold a class in--although I'd like to do some more work on the walls.  We could at least walk in tomorrow and start a class without too much distraction, which is a huge improvement to where I left it last time.  I also brought in my drill and moved some of the pegboards from wall to wall in order to make more space for a larger white board.  After lunch I went to the local hardware store and picked up an 8' by 4' piece of thin plywood to turn into a whiteboard extension.  I just can't work with that small white board up front--I need more space to work problems and have students work, etc.  We ordered some rolls of the whiteboard paper to stick to the plywood and then mount on the front wall.  It may look slightly "low-cost" but it will at least allow me to post up the required things like objectives and standards.  Then I can use the "real" whiteboard for student work and examples everyday.

The pegboards still need paper and boarders.  That's on order and should arrive Monday.  We'll have an orange and black theme in the room.  I hope the students don't get too bored of seeing every teacher post the orange and black colors all over.

The next task on my list is to really get down to the details on my 12 Angry Men project idea.  I'm going to create a couple just to see where the potential snags are.  Of course, I don't want to take away too much of the fun from the students creating this project themselves.  No spoilers here, I'm going to keep this project a secret for a little while longer so I won't go into any details on it in this post.

Blog Focus

Speaking of this (and previous) blog posts, once school starts I want to use this blog primarily for student work so I'm looking at other teacher's sites and blogs to get some direction on this.  For now, however, you will see posts about the classroom and other posts focused on me.  This is not because I want to be stuck on myself--I do want to get into the habit of posting on a regular basis, so if there is no student work then I will post just to keep the habit up.  Also, if there is no student work, you should contact me and bug me about when I'm going to give the students their assignment for the blog.