East Wake Academy is a small, K-12 charter school of approximately 1,100 students located in Zebulon, NC.  It is a wonderful environment where teachers and students are encouraged to be creative and explore information.   We want to prepare our students for the 21st Century and we need more technology in our classrooms.

I am a Nationally Certified American Sign Language teacher hired to teach American Sign Language (ASL) as a foreign language and/or elective for the students in the high school.  There are only a handful of high schools in North Carolina that offer ASL to their students and East Wake Academy has always been forward thinking in its options for students.

In an ASL Class, we work with videos….A LOT of videos.  Our school Internet capabilities are not fast enough for my students to do video assignments in class and upload them to be graded.  Being a small school, we do not have computers for every student.  I am asking for a classroom set (about 20) of iPad 2s with “student proof” cases.  Currently, students are recording videos on my personal laptop.  The video quality is very poor and has so many lags and skips that the content is unreadable and thus un-gradable.  Students are not able to get the feedback that they need to improve their skills.  Their homework is usually recorded on their Smart Phones or on a home webcam and then uploaded to Google Drive to be graded.  However, we are in a very rural area and high-speed Internet is not an option for some students. On occasion, we have trouble with videos not uploading properly.

Having 20 iPad 2s with durable cases would allow students to complete required tasks in class, research, and create activities and videos.  There are apps available to improve their skills and all with the portability that an iPad 2 allows.  Having this resource available at school would also benefit those students who have trouble with internet or webcam access at home.

To donate to her classroom check out her fundraiser on other site digitalwish.com