My Students

SMARTboards: Who needs them? For a fraction of the cost of a computerized whiteboard, a document camera lets teachers engage students by projecting any sort of paper media onto the wall.

When I was a middle school student in my district over a decade ago, my parents did not want me enrolled in the middle school where I now teach.

Plagued by low academic expectations and a rough culture, it let many students fall through the cracks. Eleven years later, as I begin my first year teaching in the district where I grew up, the school has completely turned around. Although the school still serves high-need students from a wide variety of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, and although many students still face immense challenges in their daily lives, a new administration and faculty and an energized parent base have raised expectations and performance beyond where many thought they could go. Many of my students have low resources, and many were robbed of a high-quality elementary education, but they are all united by a belief that they go to a great school that's only getting better.

My Project

Document cameras are the single most important piece of technology in today's classrooms. An evolution of the overhead projector, a doc cam lets students see a teacher (or one of their fellow classmates) work on a sheet of paper, examine a textbook diagram, or do anything else that a high-resolution video camera can capture. I will use a document camera for: -Introducing new material, where I can show students the exact process I want them to use in their own work. -Graphing work, which requires expensive graph transparencies on an overhead or alienating computer graphics with a PowerPoint. -Evaluating and correcting student work, because I can show an erroneously solved problem to the entire class. -Showing examples in the textbook or other teaching resources, without splitting student attention between their texts and the board.

My kids are smart, eager learners, and they love it when I fill every minute of their class with well-planned learning.

This camera will let me make math easier to understand for them, and drive their achievement forward.