Educational Grants

Money is always a topic of conversation when it comes to implementing new tools in a classroom.  There a tremendous amount of grant opportunities out there, and two of these may be very realistic for me in my classroom.  The first is going to my district’s Education Foundation.  The Olathe Public Schools Foundation (OPS Foundation) offers grant opportunities for a variety of uses.  To quote from their site: “The Olathe Public Schools Foundation awards grants up to $1,000 for innovative classroom projects, $2,000 for visual arts programs, and up to $5,000 for projects impacting multiple classrooms, grades, or schools.”  This opportunity can make an impact immediately when implementing the flipped class in my classroom since devices are needed to make the flips work, including the equipment to make the flips and the computers for kid’s use.

Another site worth looking into is Donors Choose.  I had the privilege of seeing this organization in action at my previous high school in Bonner Springs, Kansas.  The grant was for a flat-screen TV for the “Brave Cave”, the student lounge run by the Business Department and the Entrepreneurship classes.  One of the donating businesses provided the TV for the lounge and the business program took photos of their setup and showed the organization how they were using the donation.  This is an incredible way to gain access to some pricier options for the classroom, which again would include several laptop devices for my class for student use. 

Once more, the options are abundant with the multitude of websites out there willing to offer up grant money.  This will be something I will be looking into this next semester, for certain.

Collaboration in the Classroom

From a professional standpoint, I’ve used Twitter for the last several years to develop a strong PLN (Professional Learning Network).  Twitter utilizes the nature of social media, with it’s far reaching abilities, and blends with the professional needs of an educator.  I’ve followed and gathered useful tools from administrators, teachers in my subject, teachers within my grade level, technology resources, and many more, all in developing a well-rounded PLN where I can go at any time to gather information on a multitude of topics.  At any time I can post directly to another educator for advice or questions, or post a comment or question to a variety of groups (or hashtags) I follow, such as #edtech, #flipclass, and #sschat, to name a few.  Great resources are found in the members I follow such as Cybraryman, FreeTech4Teachers, and Edutopia.  Check these out!

When directly talking about the class, there were a couple of collaborating tools which come to mind.  First, Edmodo is the LMS (Learning Management System) I use in my class, and it’s likeness to Facebook allows students to post comments tot he wall of the class.  This enables a tremendous amount of collaboration within the confines of my supervision, and creates a safe environment which is password protected.  Students can collaborate at any time of the day, using mobile apps on their phones and tablets, as well as any computer.  The service is free and incredibly user-friendly.  The second service is Google Drive, the very popular service provided free from Google.  The ability to share a document with other users and modify the document in real time whenever any student is logged on allows collaboration at it’s highest point.  These both create easy, user-friendly methods for students to collaborate with each other.

Gaming

Getting students involved in a difficult subject is at the heart of teaching.  Many of us in the profession know how difficult it is to get students to do something even if they ARE interested!  However finding the medium between fun and learning is still at the essence of teaching, and gaming has become an important tool in this process.  Teaching Social Studies class has always had it’s fair share of games, such as using RISK or Monopoly board games to teach about imperialism or economics, however computer programs are allowing the tool of gaming to be more interactive and more readily available to students whenever they have time to play and learn.

One of the most popular websites at my middle school in Olathe is CoolMath-Games.com.  After having so many students asking to go to it when they finished their assignments, I decided to check it out and see if I could get anything out of the site.  To my surprise there was an entire section dedicated to maps and geography, and the kids started playing these on their OWN!  The best part (besides being free)... they didn’t think geography was boring any more, it was as fun as putting together a puzzle, only this time the puzzle was timed.  The more the students played, the better their map skills were getting, and I realized this was a great opportunity to implement this site into a lesson.

The students now write down their times, trying to beat their previous best (and the rest of the class’s times), and repeating the learning until they got it right.  Many students are enjoying this site on their own time outside of school, making the learning continue.  This site has allowed no down time during a lesson for those who take a little more time on assignments, since they can always go here and play (LEARN!).  We will be using this site the last couple of days before winter break to finish up on several units of study, and I hope the playing will pay off!