Innovative Ideas Classroom Grants - Fall 2011

Total Amount Approved: $35,600.00

Proposal: A Pen That Remembers
Campus: Koennecke Elementary: Sonia Kirkwood, Rhonda Jubela, Suzette Castilleja, Soledad Ramirez
Amount: $3,000.00

This program will allow for the purchase of a Livescribe Echo Smart Pen and notebooks to put affordable digital tools directly into the hands of students. This is the primary goal of any educator working to redefine teaching and learning in the 21st century. When students write in their notebooks, the pen records audio of whatever is going on around it and links the audio to the handwritten words. If a student's written notes are inadequate, he/she can tap the pen on a sentence or word, and the pen plays what the teacher was saying at that precise moment. This project will also allow teachers to create remediation tutorials and enrichment opportunities for all students in a faster, more innovative manner.

Proposal: Brain Gym - Train Your Brain!
Campus: Weinert: Pam Krippner, Mitzi Schomburg, Debra Reiley, Tricha Eckols, Majorie Duckworth, Jacquelyn Cardenas, Rebecca Marsh
Amount: $2,062.00

This program will allow for the purchase of books and supplies to create a portable brain gym to nurture creative and critical thinking skills in every child on campus. Teachers will facilitate creative problem solving and directly teach creative and logical thinking skills across all grade levels and all ability groups. Materials, books, and award winning (MENSA and PARENT CHOICE) strategy enhancing games and puzzles - all designed to develop both creative and critical thinking skills - will transform a vacant classroom into the Brain Gym.

Proposal: Thinking Like a Scientist
Campus: Jefferson: David Barton, Cesily Peeples
Amount: $550.00

The "Thinking Like a Scientist" project will purchase a classroom ELMO for the grade 5 science class. This grade 5 science TEKS require the students to master the ability to communicate scientific conclusions in written and visual forms. The ELMO would help the teacher guide the students through the process of communicating their scientific results with effective language and details. The teacher would be able to complete interactive writing and drawing activities and would be able to share student writing and drawings more effectively.

Proposal: Using an IPAD as a Classroom Learning Center
Campus: McQueeney: Janet Wolber, Kassie Hickey, Karen DePalermo, Johnel Edwards, Melissa Carpenter, Erma Freeman
Amount: $599.00

This program will allow the purchase of an IPAD to be used as part of a learning center in the classroom. Developing Learning Centers for use in all classrooms using the C-Scope curriculum is a district initiative this year. This grant will provide an opportunity for teachers to create additional Learning Centers for use in their classrooms. Getting to use an iPad will be motivational to students and will teach them that there are many more ways to use technology besides playing games. This program will be set up so that the iPad will be checked out from the library to a different teacher on a weekly basis. Keeping the iPad in the classroom for a week will allow most students the opportunity to work in the Learning Center.

Proposal: Dynamic Seating Options for PPCD and Life Skills Classrooms
Campus: Ball, Jefferson, Rodriguez, and Weinert: Geoffrey Nadeau, PT; Ami Sommerman, PTA; Robbi Rucker, COTA; Cheryl Flink; Christa Green; Amy Trevino; Kimberly Newbury; Kristi Criss; Sherry Walling; Amy Prose; Mitzi Shomburg
Amount: $2,500.00

Sitting is required for listening, writing, reading, computing, coloring, cutting, eating, and many other routine activities. In effect, students spend a majority of their day in sitting positions with minimal regard for postural safeguards and optimal positions for both access and attention to tasks. Dynamic seating has been demonstrated to reduce fatigue, increase attention, and improve overall performance in all age groups, and specifically in young children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Inflatable wedges provide the benefit of a dynamic seating surface with a shape that will facilitate improved trunk posture utilizing a small, cost-effective, and portable piece of equipment. Inflatable discs provide the same dynamic benefits and are more appropriate for some children.

Proposal: Illuminations
Campus: Seguin High School: Jamie Aven, Kristen Wilcox, Matt Teter, Kim Schmitt, Sheila Lucas, Dave Gettig
Amount: $4,371.00

The Library and Visual branch of the Fine Arts Departments of Seguin High School are working together to provide safe, primarily portable display areas (only the displays for 2-D paintings and drawings will be portable, not the proposed glass sculpture cases) in both the Varsity and Freshman Center Libraries (and possibly the area in front of the FC Library as well as the Auditorium vestibule at times) for student Art.

Proposal: Document Cameras and Wireless Pen Tablets in the Classroom
Campus: Weinert: LeeAnn Dunn, Mitzi Welfel, Rebecca Marsh
Amount: $2,500.00

This project would purchase two document cameras and two wireless tablets that would work in connection with each other to be used in math and science classrooms for instruction and activities. Integrating this technology into each lesson would assist all students in viewing and interacting with documents as well as objects that are 3-dimensional. The document camera and the tablet will be used in a large group setting, but also available for small groups of students working collaboratively.

Proposal: iThink iCan iDo with an iPad
Campus: Jefferson: April Shelnutt, Brandi Bell-Wiatrek, Cesily Peeples
Amount: $2,256.00

This program allows for the purchase of iPad 2 tablets to be utilized in fifth grade classrooms. The iPad 2 will be used in student-centered workstations allowing students to further their technological skills while increasing the student's level of mastery in their core content areas. Given district expectations of research-based student-centered workstations, students will use iPad 2 tablets to reinforce basic math, science, reading, and problem solving skills. We hope to increase student reading, math, science, and problem solving levels of mastery.

Proposal: iGap Inititative for Seguin ISD Secondary Schools
Campus: Briesemeister/Barnes: Vanessa Brown, Lisa Stevenson, Diana Farris, Patti Nieto, Alisa Ellis, Marisol Contreras; SHS: Jennifer Cooper, Maggie Mary, Chris Frels, Donna Boelter, Abby Montez, Annette Quinlan
Amount: $5,000.00

Education in the twenty-first century should match the learner's twenty-first century lifestyle. The iPod Touch can teach the low, unmotivated student to experience the excitement of learning in a safe, risk-free educational environment. By targeting the low readers in our subpopulations at the secondary level, we can inspire, instruct one-on-one, motivate, and hook a life-learner with an iPod Touch. The instrument will house everything from their textbooks, both audio and visual, to podcasts that re-teach lessons, interactive speed games reinforcing everything from grammar to math facts, access to wikis that will give students access to teacher-prepared power point lessons, assignments, notes, assessment reviews, and podcasts from real-life sources giving validity to classroom learning.

Proposal: Let's Get Interactive!
Campus: Patlan: Joan Smith, Laura Flack, Stacey Neumann, Lilly Valdez, Eva Brazle, Tamara Akers, Frank de la Torre, Katherine Baetan, Mary Ruby, Jeannie Rodriguez, Merry White
Amount: $4,534.00

This program would purchase 10 MobiViews. MobiViews deliver the same capabilities as a fixed interactive whiteboard, but also provide full mobility and full-lesson control throughout the classroom. It also allows for integration with CPS (Classroom Performance System) that provides immediate student feedback when reviewing class materials, testing and participating in daily work. The MobiView is the first of its kind to offer a large LCD touch screen that provides control over lessons from anywhere so you aren't constantly returning to your computer and it costs less than a fixed interactive whiteboard.

Proposal: E-lated about Ebooks
Campus: Rodriguez: Jaclyn Silvius, Yomeida Guerra
Amount: $3,240.00

Non-fiction books that teachers and students need are not always available in the school library. By utilizing e-books, Rodriguez Elementary faculty, students and parents will have continuous access to books that support CSCOPE. Students will utilize the large selection of technological devices available to them at Rodriguez Elementary to view the e-books as well as the technology that may be available at home and the public library. This access to e-books creates a community of learning that prior to technological advances was not possible.

Proposal: Jefferson Sensory Garden
Campus: Jefferson: Pam Colvin, Amy Honeck, Kim Newborn, April Shelnutt, Angela Laster, Cesily Peeples
Amount: $4,988.00

This program would build a sensory garden which, after having been built, would incorporate water recycling and a mid to low scale vermicomposting of lunchroom wastes with hands on interaction and learning by students. The knowledge in turn could be shared with families in order to enhance outdoor activities, recycling, and more independence and self sufficiency as well as reducing financial output for disposing of wastes.