With these funds I will...purchase 5 new iPads ($379.00 each) to be used by students in my school.

Focused on 21^st century learning, Pine Valley Elementary students have been engaged in online learning through the use of student laptop carts and iPads.  Our student population has grown substantially over the past few years, greatly increasing our need for technology.  Serving 599 students at a Title One school, the staff at Pine Valley makes a conscious effort to increase students’ access to learning through technology to ensure our students are prepared to keep up with an ever-changing, technology driven society.

I am trying to fund 5 iPads to furnish a new school iPad cart to increase student access to technology.  Our school focuses on making global connections to expand our students’ world views.  We host an annual school-wide 24 hour Skype-a-thon in which students connect with other students all over the world by Skyping, blogging, tweeting and recording on the world map what they are learning through these sessions.  We have used iPads to Skype and tweet with students while an author introduced her new book, answering questions from classrooms around the world. Our upper grades continually “flip the classroom”, having students engage in online learning so that classroom time can be spent on discussion, experiments, and project-based learning including creating their own academic video games and virtual science labs.   

The use of this technology is not limited to these school-wide events.  Each grade level at our school uses different programs as part of whole-group, small-group, and for one-on-one interventions to meet all student’s needs.  In Kindergarten we use these iPads to help with our reading groups.  As a part of our Daily 5 instruction students take part in "listen to reading" and "read to self."  With the iPads we have access to two programs our school bought for us.  On one program students are assigned books based on their reading level.  Students can listen to the book being read, read it themselves, and then take quizes on the books they have read.  As the teacher I can go in and monitor student misunderstanding with main ideas, sequencing, author's purpose and other great literacy concepts.  The other program focuses on reading and writing sight words.  Teachers can assign students word lists based on student needs.  Students listen to the words read, then play interactive games to build the words and find words in text.  Teachers can monitor student growth and misunderstanding and use the information from both programs to reteach concepts that are misunderstood.  With only one cart of 30 iPads and 599 students, it is difficult to ensure equitable student access to technology. 

I am trying to raise $2,130.00 to help provide my school with 5 additional student iPads. 

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