By
Thomas Downs
Stirling
Number of students that will benefit: 100
Age of students: 8-11
Percentage eligible for free school meals: 42.9%
Our wonderful wee school is located in the heart of Stirling city center, and serves a uniquely diverse catchment, with some of our learners coming from areas of high deprivation (decile 1) and others from significantly more affluent areas (decile 10).In total, one-third of our school community live within the areas of highest deprivation in Stirling.
It has been widely reported that with the rapid development of technologies, many of our learners will be leaving the education system to work in careers which do not yet exist. As an inner-city school, we are passionate about ensuring that our children develop the necessary skills to equip them for success in a continually developing world - in particular, their digital skills.
For many of our learners living within the lower decile areas, school is the only place where they can access the diverse range of technologies needed to develop such skills. Currently, our middle to upper school only have access to 10 Chromebooks, 7 laptops and 5 desktop computers, which is not enough even for a class set. We desperately want to change this!
What we wantThrough transforming our currently unloved break-out space into an inspiring 21st Century Digital Den, equipped with a variety of high-quality technologies, including Chromebooks and a 3D printer, we are aiming to create a relaxed space where children can collaborate, explore and develop their digital skills.
Who is this for?Our Chromebooks and 3D printer would be housed in a Digital Den Break-Out area and accessed by children from Primary 4 - 7.
Why do we want it?Increasing the number of Chromebooks we have as a school will allow for every child to work from their own device. This will ensure that no child is simply sitting 'watching' others using the technology, but are actively involved. We have seen first hand how use of Google Classroom can enhance engagement and collaboration, through children developing skills to create shared documents and work on these together from separate devices. Through using the Chromebooks, children develop skills to enhance learning across all curricular areas, from creating collaborative presentations in Social Studies, to navigating through Online Treasure Hunts in Science. Furthermore, using technology allows our learners who require additional support to edit their work easily, as well as accessing editing and drafting tools which allow them to listen back to their writing, and check that it makes sense.
Currently our school is developing a Maker Space mentality, and we are keen to develop opportunities for children to collaborate in creative design tasks, allowing them to problem solve, explore, evaluate and adapt. Children's enthusiasm for, and skills in, creative problem solving will develop through the use of innovative technologies such as a 3D printer - because they'll be bringing their designs and ideas to life!
We are looking to purchase:
5 x Chromebooks @ £270 each = £1350
http://alllearn.xma.co.uk/google/viglen360/
1 x Fabrikator Mini II 3D Printer @ £157.67
https://hobbyking.com/en_us/mini-fabrikator-v2-3d-printer-silver-eu-plug.html
Sub total: £1507.67
Credit card fees @ 2%: £30.15
Total = £1537.82
A message from our Digital Hero Learner Leadership Group:
"We would really appreciate if you could help us in whatever way we can. We are keen to develop our own skills not only for ourselves, but so that we can lead others to develop their own digital skills Having these technologies will really also help us with our learning because we know that when we get jobs, we will need to know how to use them well. Learning in the future is going to be technology based and we think it is good that we can develop our skills at a young age. Even if you aren't able to donate, please help us by sharing this message with anybody else who you think would be willing to help us!" - Calan and Annie, Primary 6
Select this reward if you just want to donate to the project without receiving a reward.
19 claimed
A thank you letter from the Head Teacher
0 claimed
Estimated delivery: 1 April 2018
A thank you from our Digital Hero Pupil Leadership Team
1 claimed
Estimated delivery: 1 April 2018
Personal recognition of donor on school website, newsletter and Twitter
1 claimed
Estimated delivery: 1 April 2018