Our Merge Cube donation tour continued this week as Eduporium’s Andy made the fourth stop on his road trip. After driving down the entire coast of California, he made it to San Diego on Sunday night. Rumor has it Andy left the world-famous San Diego dog beach to visit the Vista Grande Elementary School. He met with Kimberly Allard, who is the school’s STEAM teacher. Kimberly works with students from transitional kindergarten to fifth grade and is always looking for new tech tools to try with them, which made it the perfect situation for donating something new!
Unlike some of the other educators we’ve donated Merge Cubes too, Kimberly did not apply for our grant, though we’re hoping she does apply for it in the next month or two! She is a big fan of Donor’s Choose (who isn’t?) and that’s how Andy found her. He reached out over Twitter and set up the meeting for Monday afternoon just as school was letting out. After making his way through the traffic with dozens of parents picking up kids at the same time (this was communicated), Andy arrived at the school.
Visiting Kimberly's classroom.
Kimberly’s classroom is in a separate ancillary building behind the school, allowing him to see a lot while walking through. It is definitely a nice looking place to learn! Anyways, Kimberly keeps her classroom very organized and she has a bunch of cool decorations. It also has some additional STEM tools that we were happy to add to! Andy explained the Merge Cube and its benefits to Kimberly, even showing her the best apps to explore.
She got to see some of the content that teachers can access for teaching with AR and the Merge Cube and learn more about all that’s possible. And, the science connections students can create with the Merge Cube definitely intrigued her as well. Especially with her classroom setup, it seems like the Merge Cube will be valuable for Kimberly and her students. The tables are spread out, allowing student groups to sit together and use the Merge Cube in the middle!
Adding the Merge Cube to instruction.
As we said, we discovered Kimberly and the great work she does with her students through Donor’s Choose. She has a couple of projects up there, so, if you want to donate, you can check out her page. Kimberly also recently received some new Kid Spark kits, which Andy recognized sitting on her shelf and made sure she knew that they would also be great additions to her teaching! She'll be attending a training soon to learn more about the different kits and using them with students!
You can find more on our road trip donation initiative and special partnership with the Merge VR team here. Andy has a bit of a gap before his next school visit, which will be taking place in a couple of weeks in Texas. To follow along with any and all updates and general Eduporium information, be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram and like us on Facebook. Browse through our blog to find some of the other posts about Andy’s school visits, too!