We told you about the first beneficiary of some Holiday cheer we helped spread at the tail end of 2018 and now we’re going to talk about another one! At the end of December, we sent Holiday gifts to five educators who had previously applied for our EdTech grant but were not selected due to the number of applications and creative project ideas we received. One of the educators we then decided to send a little something to was Jean Randall, an elementary technology teacher from the Pottsgrove School District in Pottstown, Pa. Jean received an Ozobot Bit and Ozobot markers from us, which she is planning on using with her elementary students to help teach them coding and build their problem-solving skills!
Drawing on her background as a software developer, Jean has made it her goal to give each one of her students the opportunity to learn computer science skills. She also wants to help her students develop key 21st century skills, like problem solving, collaboration, and creativity, which their new Ozobot will certainly help them be able to do. Since she knows that not all of her students have access to technology outside of school, Jean is committed to giving them as much time to use it in the classroom and develop the skills they need for the future.
Jean’s students come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, income levels, and life experiences. To help combat the lack of technology exposure at home that some of them have, Jean and her colleagues have made sure that every child receives at least 45 minutes of time in the school’s computer lab every week. Within the computer lab, she’s seen her students become more confident and empowered as well as start to display computational thinking. Along with learning many of the most important digital literacies, her students have also spent some time programming on code.org, which should definitely help them be more prepared to use their new Ozobot!
Jean is also committed to teaching her students the value and the skill of persistence. She loves the idea of hands-on programming with the Ozobot using both the color codes on paper and, eventually, the block codes on the computer. As she noted in her grant application back in November, Ozobot’s are able to blend the physical and digital worlds, which she is spot on about! She will now be able to focus more on the hands-on applications of robotics and programming while also making sure her students better grasp the STEM applications—something she knows is very important.
With her Ozobot and STEM learning in general, Jean is well on her way to helping her students embrace their collective uniqueness and problem solve, collaborate, and think critically together. She’s committed to helping them learn from both their failures and successes and ensure the skills they acquire from programming with the Ozobot can be used throughout their time as students. In her mind, it is never too early to encourage analytical thinking or creative ways of problem solving!
Every student in Jean’s classroom has the opportunity to succeed or at the very least “fail up” when using their Ozobot. As they begin the new year with a new piece of technology to use, we wish Jean and her students the best of luck! If you’d like to keep up to date with what’s going on in her classroom, you can follow Jean on Twitter! And, look out for more teacher features as we share some more stories of educators who received special Holiday gifts from us. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram as well! Happy New Year!