I haven’t written since the beginning of the year, but as you can see, the students have been busy. As they start to stress about upcoming exams, I’ve given them the rest of the year off from the blog and I will write this last post before the trip in May.
I think one of the most exciting things for me this year was donating all those laptops locally, and sometimes even with face to face interactions while teaching students. I feel so good about the laptops new homes. Until about a week ago, I was feeling a little self-conscious about donating old equipment, but the New York Times recently did one of those projects where they asked teachers across the country to write in and talk about what it’s like to be a teacher today. The story that really got me was a 5th grade teacher who was given five old laptops and told to teach 35 kids how to keyboard! Not only that, there was a picture of one of the laptops and it had five keys missing! There are so many things wrong with that situation. The obvious problem is the student to computer ratio. But beyond that is the fact that the keys are broken and the class itself is so huge. With that many keys missing we would have put the laptop in the discard pile and sent it to be recycled. It made me feel really good about the donations and I really hope that we continue to get plenty of old laptops to continue this great project. We found new homes for over 40 laptops! And ALL OF THEM HAD ALL THEIR KEYS!!! As we near the end of the year and the beginning of the trip, I am excited that we will be in three different classrooms this year! I have enough students that we fill the Villa Marie completely and can reach so many more students. As of this moment, I’m still finalizing the numbers, but with one school at 76 and the other school at 48, we will most certainly reach more students than ever before. I won’t try to anticipate too much here. You’ll get all the details when the students start to blog next month. But it is really exciting that after two years of very low numbers, we can have a greater impact this year. My students are ready. My chaperones are excited, and most of the plans have been made. Stay tuned for the details!
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Recently in One Laptop Per Child, we have been working on finishing up our Scratch Projects. For my project I chose to make a spelling test, to help kids practice their spelling. Some other projects are: solving math facts, exploring different countries, comparing healthy vs. unhealthy food choices, and many more! Along with our projects, we are also making booklets to explain how we made our projects, so that we can teach kids in Barbados how to make a project similar to ours, if that is what they want to do. The booklets are proving to be more difficult than the actual project because it is very difficult to write down your entire thought process without creating instructions where someone will duplicate your project exactly, rather than include their own creativity. I am very excited for our projects to be shown to the kids, and I hope that they like them!
Hi, everyone! I am Catherine and am one of the students in One Laptop Per Child. During these classes, I created a Scratch multiplication project that allowed children to practice multiplication. In addition, I created a booklet for this project so that the Barbadian teachers could utilize this booklet to create more Scratch projects and benefit the students there. I feel that it was a very meaningful experience because I was learning a lot about myself. While teaching a fourth grader, I learned that I need to teach the kids how to explore coding by themselves instead of doing everything for them. Though it was hard to see a kid struggling, I finally realized that I needed to let them experience failure and achieve success on their own.
Recently in One Laptop, most of us have just finished our sample projects that we created specifically for children so they could recreate the projects and learn from them. The big packet of all the games together is being created so we will have more to teach students in after school programs and Barbados that are interested in learning. Later this week, a few students and I will be going to Westerville to work with kids and teach them how to use Scratch using these sample games all the students have just created! These types of opportunities have given me chances to advance my teaching skills, which made me realize that I actually like teaching very much! Freshman year we worked a bit with Scratch but over the course of this year I’ve been able to go out on my own and learn more and more about Scratch every day. The trip that Mackenzie, Merill, and I went on to the Family Shelter in Bexley was a great experience that made me feel more prepared for Barbados, and it has been my favorite thing we’ve done so far. I’m so excited to further my knowledge and prepare for Barbados while we work towards the end of the year!
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About this pageDuring the school year, students will blog once per week. Please check back often. Archives
April 2018
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