We have started another month and that means we have news about the awarding of our EdTech grant for August. For this latest award, we’ve presented a grant to Carla Neely, who is a fourth and fifth grade STEM teacher at an all-girls school located near Cleveland, Ohio! At the Warner Girls Leadership Academy, Carla works with many Title I students. She has the goal to get as many of them interested in computer science as possible. Being able to appreciate that so much, we’re happy to award her our grant from August!
Carla is always looking for new ways to bring meaningful EdTech to her students, and help inspire them to explore more STEM both in the present and in the future. She also knows, however, that not every piece of educational technology is valuable if the students aren’t using it efficiently. Beyond that, Carla is committed to finding grants and getting students into STEAM because of the statistics that reflect very small numbers of women in computer science careers as opposed to men—especially among African American women, which is the predominant race at her school. Since she teaches elementary kids, Carla helps ensure they'll experience computer science early and participate in meaningful experiences often!
Luckily for Carla, others she works with share this belief and students do start learning about coding early on. They don’t always get the tangible experiences, however, and that’s something Carla is on the path to changing. For the grant award, we’ll be providing her with an Ozobot Classroom Communicator and an Ozobot Evo. They will help her facilitate more meaningful coding experiences for her kids. Carla has used Ozobot robots in the past and, with that addition of the Communicator, she’ll be able to monitor students more closely. She also plans to provide them with more personalized instruction whenever they need it.
Beyond teaching coding skills, Carla will also use the Evo's to help teach important social and life skills to students. Since learning with the Evo Robot is easy for many children to pick up, she likes using it to teach coding because, even if a student is completely new to programming, they won’t feel overwhelmed thanks to its simplicity and accessibility. Carla enjoys creating collaborative learning experiences for her students whenever possible, which is something she will be using this STEM grant for, particularly for helping them analyze, reason, and communicate ideas among each other.
She has plans to use her new tools in different curricular areas, including math, science, and reading. She also plans on creating Ozobot lessons to showcase sequencing in reading classes, step-by-step problem solving in math classes, and having students demonstrate their knowledge of life cycles in science classes. Being able to use their Classroom Communicator along with the Ozobot Classroom software will also help. Carla can keep track of every students’ progress and pinpoint areas they might need some more practice. She even plans on trying to raise some additional money to purchase an Ozobot Evo Classroom Kit. This would allow all students to use their own robot—especially once they return to the classroom.
We congratulate Carla on receiving this month’s grant and thank her for her commitment to STEM learning and her application. We know these materials will help inspire these girls to take a greater interest in STEM now and going forward. If you'd like to apply for our next EdTech grant, we will again be awarding $500 for September. You can apply here and feel free to share the link with any innovative educators in your school community. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram too for reminders and more EdTech news!