Supporting Equity, Innovation, and Lifelong Learning in Howard County Public Schools
Supporting Equity, Innovation, and Lifelong Learning in Howard County Public Schools
The Bright Minds Foundation works with HCPSS to identify students from middle schools around the county who do not have access to computers in their homes. The Foundation then purchases refurbished, Internet ready, desktop computers from the Lazarus Foundation to give to these students. Included in each student’s package are also brand new printers, flash drives, security software, and Microsoft office software. Students and a parent attend a two and one half hour training session conducted by the Lazarus Foundation to learn how to set up and use their equipment, and at the end of the session, they take the computer home with them. We have given out just under 200 computers through 2009.
To learn more about this project, view the following video. Click here.
To donate computers to the Lazarus Foundation, please go to www.lazarus.org for information.
The 2009 Teacher Grants projects are coming to a close. Some of them are pictured below.
The Girls Talk group created a poster to display their ideas on how to promote peace and civility in their community using shared thoughts from the day’s brain storming activity session.
The students are creating a public service announcement for children using iMovie software. Here we see them gathering information about different food groups in order to categorize various food items into breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack groups. Once categorized, the students will provide examples of different foods along with nutrient and health benefit information for each. The students will also provide portion control advise for the various food items.
Teachers and students at Homewood use document cameras to increase student engagement in learning through visual discovery. Many of our Homewood students are visual learners. Instruction with the document camera helps them to build background information, as well as process, analyze and present new information. The document cameras are used as part of a larger project at Homewood titled, "Bring Learning Alive," which applies the use of multiple intelligences in the classroom. Bright Minds board members visited Homewood to learn more about the equipment and how the teachers use it.
