Past projects 3
Equipment for Our Rock Band Club to Record and Perform!
Funded Sep 29, 2022Thank you again so much! It's been a joy to see the students engage with the equipment! We have rock band Mondays with 4 kids all playing guitar at the same time (not to mention a kid on the drums, and a bassist student as well), working through a Nirvana song, learning, playing, making music. It's such a joy to have specific equipment dedicated to specific instruments and the excitement generated by the equipment in our burgeoning musicians in tremendous! I hope that as the students play the equipment more and more, the sounds will attract even more curious music lovers to come into the space and try it all out! Thank you so much for making that possible!”
With gratitude,
Mr. Sands
Making Our Phones Go Further: Smartphone Lens Kits
Funded Mar 15, 2017Thank you all again so much for the generous donations that you gave. The students really had a wonderful time taking and editing their pictures and the lens kits added a whole new dimension to what they were able to do. The pictures I uploaded are just a small sample of the work that the students did and the variety of subject matter that they captured was so compelling and interesting.
In particular, the macro lenses in the kit really captured the students imaginations. I had students running around the lunch benches outside my room taking pictures of plants and animals with clarity that was unobtainable with the naked eye. The excitement and exploration that the lenses sparked was really inspirational.
It was such a joy to introduce a new avenue for students to express themselves visually. Art class can be a challenge for students who do not feel like they are good at drawing and painting and to get to offer them a different modality for them to capture an image was really fun. Thank you all again for all you have done, I am so grateful!”
With gratitude,
Mr. Sands
6th Grade Class Weather Ballon Data Collection
Funded Nov 26, 2015I can't say enough about how much my whole class has appreciated your kind donations. We are getting closer to being launch ready everyday and the opportunities that the materials you donated have provided us have been integral. The chance for students to work through an engineering problem of this scope has been tremendous and the innately interdisciplinary nature of this kind of project has challenged and pushed my students to grow.
We have had the chance to learn (and review from earlier in the year) topics ranging from weather patterns to density to chemical reactions (turns out even though hydrogen has incredible lift, its volatility might make it less suitable than noble helium for our purposes). Students have learned to evaluate multiple variables, and make predictions based on the presented data.
And the best is yet to come. As we draw ever nearer to our launch, students are growing even more excited. Launch day will give students a rare opportunity: all their hard work will leave their control, and they will have to trust in their engineering acumen. As learners, its not all that often that the fate of our work is completely out of our control, yet when we release our balloon, we are allowing that to happen. Is there a chance that we won't be able to recover our balloon? That the electronics could fail? That the parachute could fail to engage? Of course, and that makes the project all that much more exciting.
Thank you again for the incredible opportunity that you have afforded my class. I sincerely believe students will hold on to the lessons they've learned and the memory of their launch day for years to come. You made that happen, and we can't thank you enough.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Sands