My district is sponsoring a grant opportunity for teachers in our district. I'm helping several of my teachers write grants. The grand prize? A MacBook, 2 Mac Minis, 3 iPods, a microphone, and a digital camera. My school is a PC environment, so I'm looking for some suggestions for the grants. If you were given these tools (or already have them), what are some specific ways you would use them with your students? Any feedback will be appreciated!

Tags: Mac, apple, grant, iPod

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Come up with a good idea. Last time we won a grant we had a project in mind--CSI: Cemetery Scene Investigation. Define the learning outcomes, come up with a project and "oh, btw, we can't do the project without the computer, cameras, etc". Never ask for the stuff--remember the developement of the student skills is what you want. Good projects might include history of your school district, history of your town, oral histories, local nature preserve, etc. Macs are good for video, desktop publishing, Good luck, N.
No, this is a district sponsored grant. My district just purchased an Apple server to host blogs, podcasts, etc., and I think the "powers that be" are just trying to test the waters of Apple equipment by offering this grant.
I teach preschool at the moment, and the other day I discovered there are several video podcasts from shows like Dora the Explorer and Sesame Street. How cool would it be to have an "iPod Center" in the pre-K or K classroom where kids watched the Sesame Street Video Podcast on individual ipods? We've been doing listening centers for ages, its about time we bumped it into the 21st century if you ask me!

With the microphone and digital camera you could also create some of your own podcasts... for example you could have young children act out and say nursery rhymes. It seems like that could work either with video or a series of still shots. Where I teach nursery rhymes are a part of the assessment we subject our pre-k's too, so this would be a way for them to get very familiar with some of the nursery rhymes by acting them out (and hey, you could include the finished product in the iPod center!!) You could also do podcasts with some of the phonics songs like Dr Jean's "Alphabet in My Mouth" where the kids hear the name of the letter and the sound it makes. With a video podcast you could add the element of having them SEE the letter as well!
What age group are you looking at?
Probably grades 3-5. Any ideas?
I should begin by saying that I am also in a PC environment, but my home is an Apple place. So I have not used any of this equiptment on a large educational scale, but I do love the easy of use with Imovie and Iphoto. My fourth and fifth graders have created movies that represent published drafts of an exspository essay. They wrote an essay on Tectonic plates and then used the software to create short movies that illustrate how those plates created volcanoes, earthquakes, and earth movements. Then they read their essays onto the movies. If you took a topic and then created a movie project, this could reinforce both a science or social studies topic and use the writing process as. By having the two mac minis and the ibook, there could be three computer stations while the other studnets are drafting. A center approach would probably work the best in this situation. The iPods could be used as a school/home connection so the movies could be shown on them. If you place them on a video podcast, then parents could comment on them, as well. I think it is so hard because you could develop one project and that project would be great, but the use of the equipment in all areas of learning will change the environment. Good luck, please let me know how it turns out.
Great ideas! Thanks for sharing!

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