Hello! Welcome to my classroom blog! I hope you are as thrilled as I am about the upcoming years fun projects. As you know, the PTA has been raising money to provide a laptop for every child in our school. I highly encourage all who have time to become involved in the fundraising effort, whether it be a donation or volunteer hours to help with organization or fundraising. Anything will help, and the benefits go straight to your children!

Let me first acknowledge your trepidation about your child or children using computers in the classroom by saying that I, too was very skeptical at first. At some point, though, I came to the realization that your children as well as mine are growing up in a different world, full of technology, and are thinking very differently than you or I did as children. They relate to technology because it is all around them. I have taught from paper textbooks and from digital textbooks, as have many other teachers, and the results are surprising: the students learning from the digital textbook actually test better! The reason being is that, as stated earlier, they are simply used to digital media, and can interact and absorb it much easier than more traditional media. That being said, we still have them read literature books and such that are important for critical areas of brain development. Learning through digital media may seem foreign to you or me, but your children, studies have shown, actually think differently than we do, therefor making digital form of learning very successful at teaching them!

If you would like to read a paper about this subject, go here.

On top of the fact that children interact with technology more naturally these days, when they get out of school, this very same interaction will help them greatly in finding a good job or going to a good college, whichever they choose to do. Check out a list of jobs that have good futures here, and make note of how many involve technology!

There are two main areas in which my room and you children could benefit greatly: Computers for all of them and 10 digital point-and-shoot cameras that also have video capabilities. My students will be required to keep digital journals, some of which will include videos and audio recordings. These kids will be so happy if/ when they get all their equipment!

Let's get these kids learning how they learn best - digitally! Please consider even just donating an old computer to the classroom (I fix them up and let the students use them.) so we can all learn and have fun doing it!

Thanks!

Loren McDonald

References:

Prensky, M. (2001). Do They Really Think Differently? From On the Horizon (MCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 6, December 2001). Retrieved from: http://cwpjasoncourtmanche.wikispaces.com/file/view/Prensky+-+Digital+Natives,+Digital+Immigrants+-+Part2.pdf

Robinson, M. T. Hot Jobs For The Future. From Careerplanner.com. Retrieved from: http://www.careerplanner.com/career-articles/hot_jobs.cfm