Educational Technology Group
Technology Services
Dr. Lewis D. Holloway Paul Sims Virginia R. Jewell, Ed. D.
Superintendent Executive Director Director
Paul and Ginger:
I heartily endorse the 21st Century Classroom Grant project being submitted by Shawn Hinger. Shawn has already established herself as a teacher who is open to innovative teaching methods and approaches. She is also involved in cross-curricular classes, through our Extended Learning Time program, with connections teachers and with our media specialist. She would be an ideal person to support with a classroom grant, and her students would benefit significantly from her efforts. Please let me know if you need more detailed information from me.
Dr. Ken Sherman, Principal
ClarkeMiddle School
Dear Dr. Jewell and 21st Century Model Classroom Grant Committee Members:
I am writing today to ask you to support Shawn Hinger’s application. As a Technology Integration Support Specialist, this is my first year working with Ms. Hinger at ClarkeMiddle School. Although we have not worked together long, I am very impressed by what I have seen. For instance, all classrooms at Clarke Middle had SMART Boards installed over the summer. During preplanning, teachers got an introductory training on the boards. When I went to visit Clarke Middle on the first day of school, almost every teacher was using a SMART Board presentation Ms. Hinger had prepared. She is a teacher who sees new technology not for its own sake, but for how it can help her teach and help her students learn. Teachers have continued to look to her as a leader in technology.
Ms. Hinger has shared her plans to create and maintain a class blog, and she and her students are very excited about the idea. I believe that this is one example of the type of innovation Ms. Hinger could implement with proper classroom technology. I also know she has spent a great deal of time collaborating with other teachers to develop cross-curricular opportunities for students to write. For instance, Ms. Hinger is coordinating her efforts with the art teacher to try to encourage writing from reluctant writers with artistic talent.
Ms. Hinger would make excellent use of classroom technology, so I strongly encourage the committee to support her application.
Sincerely,
Drew McNeely
Technology Integration Support Specialist
ClarkeCountySchool District
September 22, 2005
To Whom It May Concern:
I think that my teacher, Mrs. Hinger, should get the laptops, because Mrs. Hinger is such a great teacher. Ms. Hinger does stuff with technology all the time. Using the Smart Board, we do our journals, daily grammar, and we will be presenting projects. For my ELT, where I have Mrs. Hinger again, we work on web logs (blogs), which is a journal online. It would be so neat if we could just have the computers in her room to work on, instead of going down to the computer labs on the sixth or seventh grade hallways. A lot of teachers in my school use technology, so it is hard for her to get in the computer labs everyday. Ms. Hinger is a great teacher; she is so much fun to have.
I enjoy walking into the room everyday and wondering what we are going to do next. I think that she would really use the laptops. Last year, I was in Ms. Causey’s class, and we had laptops, and it was so much fun. We worked on Power Points in class, we took notes when she was talking about something that we needed to hear and then, when she didn’t want us to take notes she made a little Power Point or web site that we could go on and look around and see what we could find to better understand the product. If we had laptops in Ms. Hinger’s class we could go online, to websites like brainpop.com, daily grammar.com, or wrtitingfix.com. We could play language arts or spelling games or find your adjectives. We could do so much more with laptops!
The best thing about having laptops in the classroom would be that we are doing our work just like we will in the real world. When you are working on the computer and you are typing a journal and you make a mistake, all you have to do is back space. When you are typing a word and a little red line pops up underneath it, you know that something is wrong. I think I find it easier to type and then you can find out how it is spelled and you won’t make the mistake again.
By having the laptops we would not be restricted by time. We could work on our work at home, during school or even during lunch. We could work on our blogs even more than before. Seeing people’s responses to your journals, pictures and artwork or responding to someone else’s journal gives you different perspectives on books and writing and stuff. I can also make comments or suggestions on what they write. When we are reading a book we can take notes and save them on our blog. It would really change our classroom to get these laptops.
Sincerely,
Marina Thomas
8th grade CMS Student Extraordinaire
440 Dearing Extension Athens, Georgia 30606(706) 227-7830Fax (706) 316-1269