With these funds I will be purchasing an Elmo Document Camera. The cost of this document camera is $574.00 to purchase though this site. I will only be purchasing 1 unit.

The school that I work at is a Title 1 school that has very little technology within the school as well as little funds to purchase new and updated technology. We only have one document camera within the whole building to accommodate for grades K - 5. The only item that I can check out, when available, is an overhead project that I have to use transparent paper for.

The money that I am asking for will impact me as a teacher, my students and my classroom in several ways. As a teacher, I will be able to enrich my teaching by using resources, such as books and documents that I do not have enough of for the whole class. I will also be able to hook the camera up to my computer to use educational websites to learn new material as well as talk with other classrooms around the world. My classroom will benefit from the document camera by enriching the atmosphere and displaying the possibility to use more technology within my teaching. However, my students will benefit the most from it. As a class, we use interactive notebooks in both Math and English Language Arts. These notebooks allow us to take notes together as we learn new material, complete practice problems and create easy ways to remember steps to solve problems. As a person, I am big on organization to make sure that my students can find information to help them easily. However, I cannot put our notes directly into my notebook because I do not have the technology to display it so that every students can see it. The students miss out on the modeling part of where I would demonstrate how to keep things organized and how to structure the notebook on a large scale at the front of the classroom. Modeling is one of the key components in teaching and this document camera will make it easier for me to demonstrate that to them.

My students deserve this resource because they are hard working students who always show me that they are eager to learn. My job as an educator is to give these students the best education possible, and I believe that this Elmo can help improve the students experience by presenting items, like our interactive notebooks, textbooks and read-a-loud books so that every child in my class can see and learn from it. These students come from very poor and broken homes and as a teacher I cannot fix where they come from, but I can hopefully help impact where they are going in life. Even though funds for an Elmo Document camera might not sound like a big deal in changing the lives of students, I believe that it is because change needs to start somewhere. If I can improve the way I teach to provide more understanding and clarity to my students, then the education they get in my class could be the start of a ripple to something greater in the future. Someone just has to start the ripple and that is what I intend to do.

Back Up Plan