If I had $10,000 for the purchase of various handheld devices for my school, I would have a field day. First, I would e-readers. These would be primarily for the dyslexic students, but I would like (ideally) to have the ability to let anyone check them out. I really like the Nook and the Kindle, but as Amazon.com isn't a vendor with our district and B&N is, I'd go with the Nook. As much as I love touch technology, I would probably go with the regular black and white Nooks. I don't know a lot about dyslexia, but I worry that the color Nook might be difficult for the students to read. At the current price, each Nook would run about $150 so for 10 of them that would be $1500.
Next, I would look at purchasing ipads. There are so many awesome educational apps for the ipad, and I love that the students get excited about getting to use them. From the constellation apps for science to the e-books that students can create and read, students can accomplish so much on these tablets/personal media devices. While ipads technically could be considered a tablet, they don't really do well for word processing. You can word process on it, but it's not necessarily designed for word processing. However, I think that it's worth buying these for the application functions, especially since most schools, including mine, have a couple of computer labs and even a set of laptops that classes can check out. For a good ipad (64 gig but wi-fi only, no 3G), an ipad runs about $750. If I could get 6 of these, then the price would run $4500. While I could save money by buying ones with less memory, I don't think I would. Machines with less memory tend to get sluggish sooner and I would be worried that teachers would stop using the ipads quicker than if I were to purchase machines with a higher memory capacity.
So far, my running total is $6000 - that leaves me $4000 to play with. The rest of the money I would like to use for the purchase of video cameras that can be leant out to classes. Many classes can create videos for class projects and I would love to be able to purchase at least 20 of them (with memory cards) for the teachers to be able to check out. Kodak makes several types of pocket video camcorders that can mount to a tripod and also use memory cards to hold the video information. Kodak makes a camera called ZI8 which runs about $200. For a camera, tripod, and memory card the cost would be about $250. That means that I could purchase 16 camera sets and that would use the remaining $4000.
So, what are some project ideas that teachers can use with all this new, fun technology?
- class videos: each group can take a different topic and create their own movie
- commercials: want to teach ethos, pathos, and logos? Have the students make a commercial using these techniques.
- record scenes: in theatre, the students can practice their scenes and then watch themselves so that they can see what they need to improve on
- star mapping: use your ipad to save a trip to the planetarium
- teleprompter: putting on a show? Ipad has an app to turn your ipad into a teleprompter.
- ibooks: ipads can allow you to create a book in Pages and save it so that it can be flipped through as a book and students can see their work "in print"
-ibooks, part 2: purchasing ibooks for the ipad will allow you to play them back (and have them read aloud) for ELL students, beginning readers, or those that need help.
...and so much more...
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