Past projects 23
Sound & Visual Projection for CS Lectures & Videos
Funded Jan 30, 2022This project has been immensely helpful to my students, including the projection of audio across the back of my room. The Apple HomePod Mini has had such an incredible impact, as I am now able to project audio from Computer Science Videos and also project my voice through the intercom speaker, students can now more easily understand, grasp and explore major CS concepts.
This has really saved my voice and encouraged participation from students as it is very difficult talking over the multiple air filters in the room, the ambient noise coming in through the open windows and then overcoming the difficulty of voice projection through a mask. All of these protocols are great in that they keep us safer from covid, but this speaker has gone a long way in getting us back to a slightly more normalized environment where we can discuss and hear one another better.
The HDMI cables have enabled me to push visuals to different points around my room as well. These cables have enabled students to connect their Chromebooks to external monitors to share out the wonderful apps, websites and animated features that they are building in my class daily. Sincerest thanks for your wonderful support of our classroom and the computer sciences.”
With gratitude,
Mr. McCoy
Keyboard and Mice for Coding
Funded Nov 30, 2021The impact of these mice and keyboards has been fantastic on my students. In all of my classes, I have students who need larger screens and workspaces. These Apple keyboards and mice have enabled us to get the full functionality out of these old iMacs that we cleaned up that the English department was getting rid of. This donation has enabled me to build these collaborative spaces and my students have really benefited from having the space to map out and design apps and then perform their programming builds.
Students who had difficulty working with a trackpad on a laptop and need digital entry points and scaffolds to access the content have found these wireless mice and keyboards and workspaces to be incredibly impactful. This donation has helped our Seniors participate more fully in lessons and better understand important computer science concepts. Thank you so much for your support of our classroom.”
With gratitude,
Mr. McCoy
This classroom project was brought to life by Con Edison and one other donor.Collaborative Workspace for APCS Programmers
Funded Nov 24, 2021The impact of these tables has been fantastic on my students. In all of my classes, I have students who need larger screens and workspaces. These tables have worked beautifully as collaborative spaces and my students have really benefited from having the space to map out and design apps and then perform their programming on the iMacs that I have set up.
Students who had difficulty working with a trackpad on a laptop and need digital entry points and scaffolds to access the content have found these tables and workspaces to be incredibly impactful. This donation has helped our Seniors participate more fully in lessons and better understand important computer science concepts. Thank you so much for your support of our classroom!”
With gratitude,
Mr. McCoy
This classroom project was brought to life by Con Edison and 3 other donors.Social Distanced Coding with Screencast
Funded Nov 8, 2021The impact of this Apple TV 4k has been profound on my computer science classroom. Students are enabled to screencast from anywhere in the room up to our Promethean Board. This is incredibly powerful when we have the ability for students to share out, get class feedback and provide exemplary work to their peers. When a student has a question that many other students are struggling with, when coding, it makes it much more efficient and easier to quickly project the program up to the board so that we can stop class and come back together to identify bugs, fixes and solutions. This technology enables me to better support all of my students in a timely fashion, and leverage the growing programming expertise of the collective.
Another huge benefit to this ability to seamlessly screencast is that students can present their work from anywhere in the room, allowing individual and group presentations of Apps, websites and animations developed using JavaScript and HTML/CSS. We are able to hold presentations without students moving from their workstations thus enabling us to maintain adequate social distance with the current covid climate. Previously, I would have students and groups go to the front of the room to plug in their devices, but that gets difficult to manage when maintaining appropriate distance between students. This donation truly has enabled us to bring back this major component of our class and has provided a platform for exposition of work, as well as audience participation.
Having this screencast ability also enables me to demo from my iPad and support students with designing and mapping out their animated scenes in my Intro to JavaScript class. As students model with different functions and employ the powerful CS concepts of loops, conditionals, lists and objects it can be very helpful to write out ideas and explore concepts in a model format. Sketching out ideas in this digital format that can be demonstrated and modelled for the class has been really key.
My students have been thrilled with this new capability and some have even commented that it is easier and more comfortable sharing their work from their desk, rather than standing in the front of the room. Building this essential soft skill for presenting information, our work and for defending our positions is key and your donations have enabled me to help my students continue to build these skills during a very difficult time. This has helped our Seniors participate more fully in lessons beyond just being lost on their own devices. Student presentations and whole class discussions have truly benefited.
Thank you so much for all your support of our classroom and the computer sciences in the South Bronx. Both my AP Computer Science courses and my Intro to Programming classes deeply appreciate your contribution. You have enabled me to better support my students' access to important Computer Science content and concepts, and for that I am truly grateful. My sincerest thanks and warmest wishes as we turn the page on an incredibly challenging 2021 and move into 2022.”
With gratitude,
Mr. McCoy
This classroom project was brought to life by Con Edison and 2 other donors.Computer Science Digital Whiteboard
Funded Nov 9, 2020My computer science students and I are immensely grateful for the wonderful donations that enabled the leveraging of our digital whiteboard space using the donated iPad and Apple Pencil. Computer Science is full of intense concepts that many students need supporting visualizations to support them in connecting these concepts to designing and building programs. Leveraging these tools in our Google meet enabled me to diagram and display problem solving steps that were color coded and helped me support all learners in my classes. So much of programming is the designing and diagramming process, and this enabled me to model that process and address student's questions and comments in real time in the digital space.
Sincerest thanks for the support through this very challenging year. Your support and donation made the year much easier to navigate and we truly appreciate it.”
With gratitude,
Mr. McCoy
This classroom project was brought to life by Con Edison and one other donor.Enable Accessibility and Participation on Digital Platforms
Funded Oct 9, 2020The impact of these headsets with microphones has been profound. Both for students in the school building, as blended learners, and for those students that were fully remote throughout the school year and did not have an appropriate headset to enable participation on google meet. Many students had siblings at home, also with classes occurring and many other background distractions. These headsets allowed students to participate more fully in my computer science lessons and stay focused throughout.
Students who had background noise in the homes, and students in the building that couldn't previously participate due to the intense background noise from their ChromeBook audio and mics all being on and the terrible feedback loop truly benefited from this donation. This helped our Seniors participate more fully in lessons beyond just exercising the chat space to provide comments and questions. Student presentations and whole class discussions truly benefited. From the bottom of our hearts - thank you so much to the donors that helped make this project a reality. These headsets also helped students beyond my CS classroom and enabled better participation across all senior classes throughout this very challenging year.”
With gratitude,
Mr. McCoy
This classroom project was brought to life by Con Edison and one other donor.