Dear Parents,
Tonight we want to inform you about the PTA's fund-raising efforts and encourage each and every one of you to get involved with your child greater learning. As most of you are aware of our school moving into a new technological upgrade we encourage you to read and understand some key points in why we are doing this move. We hope you will find this helpful and useful and understand what this means not only for you but most importantly for your child.
Every year across the United States each public school on average spends from $700-$1,000 on books per student and can cost up to $2,500 depending on students in advancement classes. Over the years, the world has become more technologically advanced than ever before. It seems every week a newer technology has come out on computers, TV’s, cell phones, and computer software. The idea to teach our students not only technology but saving money and bettering their future has come to one conclusion; changing out the old books we spend thousands of dollars on each year and replacing them with a tablet. A tablet is like a computer but much sleeker, compact but still has much of the similarities as a desktop or laptop computer. Please read Tablet PC’s Go to School to further understand benefits that others schools are receiving from this switch. (http://www.pcworld.com/article/114383/tablet_pcs_go_to_school.html) We could cut the cost of books we spend each year from average $700-$1000 per student down to an average price of $237 dollars per student by the year 2014. The best part is that once we purchase them, its $237 dollars total for 4 years per student rather than the average $2,800-$4000 per student per year. By all the money we can save it would open endless doors of being able to offer classes in computer design / software, renewable energies, engineering, or even such classes dealing with human resources. By offering classes like these we could help guide the students on the right path of choosing a major they want to strive for in college. Also read this article named Schools look at switching from printed textbooks to the digital format. (http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2009/08/09/schools-look-at-switching-from-printed-textbooks-to-the-digital-format/)
Directed Learning
When teaching directed learning teachers need to be open minded and remember not everyone learns on the same spectrum. Roblyer and Doering state on page 44, “ Integration to remedy identified weaknesses of skills deficit. Traditional teacher-directed methods and materials are used: lectures, skill worksheets.” Directed learning encourage more individual work to teach students to think on their own. To learn more about directed learning visit http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu/final.paper.pub/_pwfsfp/0000017b.htm
Lesson
English- Creative Writing
Objective
1) Recognize format writing in MLA format
2) Grammar concept
3) Understand 5 paragraph essays
Explanation of student outcome:
Students should be able to format, write, and construct a proper essay on their own
Constructivist Learning
Teaching students how to work together in a group and also how to work independently on their own. According to Robler and Doering state on pg 44, “Integration to foster group cooperation. Integration to allow for multiple and distributed intelligences.” By this students need to gain the knowledge they are learning and how they are learning it as an individual, we all learn differently and we understand it differently. To learn more about it visit, http://www.exploratorium.edu/IFI/resources/constructivistlearning.html
Lesson Idea
Subject: Math
Topic: Identifying Prime Numbers
Objectives:
- Objective 1: Recognize and define a prime number.
- Objective 2: Collect and record data.
- Objective 3: Make conclusions based the data.
What did the students find out about numbers and groupings? Students should discover that the size of a number does not correlate with the amount of possible groupings.
By moving into this direction it would allow us to fully upgrade the school to a complete private, controlled wifi that will allow students to download their homework right from the class page everyday fill it out and when they return to class it will link up to the school wifi that will automatically email the completed work to the teacher. It will also allow you as the parents to go onto our school website and gain access to your child’s classes and not only find out what homework is suppose to be done but also access the work that has been graded and an update grade that your child is holding in the class throughout the semester. These tablets will be equipped with Stylus that will automatically save notes or discussions written down during the class session, the time saved the money saved by this simple switch will help the parents understand how there child is doing, but also further your child education and experience in this advance technological fast paced world we live in today. Please feel free to post any comments or questions you have and we will do our best to get them answered in a timely matter. We greatly appreciate all your time and efforts.
DISCLAIMER: This blog is an assignment for an educational technology course at National University. It is not a real fundraising blog.
Aune, S. (2009) Schools look at switching from printed textbooks to the digital format. http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2009/08/09/schools-look-at-switching-from-printed-textbooks-to-the-digital-format/ Retrieved 3/5/2011
Hein, G (1991) Constructivist Learning Theory http://www.exploratorium.edu/IFI/resources/constructivistlearning.html Retrieved 3/6/2011
Lucks, R. (1999) Constructivist Teaching VS Direct Instruction
Reid, R. ( 2011) Tablet PCs Go to School http://www.pcworld.com/article/114383/tablet_pcs_go_to_school.html Retrieve 3/4/2011
