Editorial: Hooking kids on cool technology - Sonoma Index-Tribune

Just earlier Thanksgiving, a fistful of fifth-grade students astatine Sassarini Elementary School piled into the Maker’s Lab, focused connected a shared goal. They wanted to spot their DASH robots creation successful the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, grooving done the streets of New York City — astatine slightest digitally speaking. The parade was projected connected a surface and the robots were lone pretending, but that didn’t halt the students from having a precise real-world acquisition connected what it’s similar to instrumentality portion successful 1 of America’s astir iconic events.

Meanwhile, implicit astatine Flowery Elementary School, students rode done the canals of Venice successful gondolas, traversed the steep reddish cliffs of Zion National Park successful Utah and adjacent orbited Jupiter — all done the usage of virtual reality. Now, the school’s room draws students astatine recess who privation to usage the caller exertion to play, portion besides learning astir the adjacent large integer frontier.

Teaching was harder than ever successful the pandemic, erstwhile integer platforms became the norm for our students. Frustrating and ineffective, astir students saw a drop successful their world performance, portion galore educators near the field, creating disruption crossed our classrooms.

All these caller accent makes DASH robots and virtual world headsets truthful important.

Students are learning cutting-edge technology, vulnerability that volition assistance them stay much savvy arsenic they turn successful this progressively integer satellite — plus, it’s fun. Kids, particularly elementary-aged students, look to airy up astir these learning opportunities. And studies amusement thing that makes acquisition much engaging is simply a bully thing.

“Working connected the wide accepted content that children larn champion by doing oregon being, virtual world possesses the quality to maximize learning by letting pupils ‘be’ oregon ‘do’ thing imaginable – without ever having to permission the classroom,” Teach Wire, an award-winning acquisition website, reported. “According to acquisition psychologists, we retrieve 10% of what we read, 20% of what we perceive and 90% of what we do. Students are truthful much apt to clasp accusation learned successful an immersive situation during a virtual world acquisition than successful a much accepted acquisition oregon schoolroom setting.”

Such tech, unsurprisingly, tin beryllium outgo prohibitive successful galore areas. Here, we are fortunate to person the Sonoma Valley Education Foundation, which has been filling gaps successful our classrooms since 1993. It was their generosity that brought robots to Sassarini ($150 each, with 5 present connected campus) and virtual world headsets astatine Flowery (purchased via a $1,000 grant). Teachers are allowed to use for Classroom Grants each year, and donor’s tin peruse the requests and enactment the task that astir appeals to them.

The instauration and its donors person besides funded preschool for all, backed myriad creation programs, built up libraries and provided plentifulness of schoolhouse supplies, among dozens of different acts of kindness that marque learning much approachable and entertaining. All these ideas stem from our teachers and schoolhouse staff, the ones who spot each time what children request to flourish.

While immoderate sentiment writers accidental over-investing successful aboriginal tech trends tin beryllium a discarded of dollars, it’s hard not to beryllium swayed by the reports nonstop from our classrooms.

“This month, a fifth-grader told maine helium would go an technologist due to the fact that helium is bully astatine solving problems,” said Danielle Wroblewski, the Sassarini teacher down the DASH robot program. “And a 3rd grader enthusiastically told maine helium could debug 7 bugs successful his code. He was truthful arrogant of himself for being capable to occupation lick connected his ain and get the robots moving.”