Making Science Labs "Remarkable"

School:: Oakridge Middle
Subject:: Science
Teacher:: Maria Hill (LaRocco)
Students Impacted:: 140
Grade:: 6
Date:: September 7, 2018

Investor

Thank you to the following investor for funding this grant.

Suncoast Credit Union - $1,947.00

Impact to My Classroom

# of Students Impacted: 140

At 12 years old, students don’t often feel like they hold much power. Their parents and teachers are primarily setting the boundaries, dictating privileges and essentially still telling them what to do. The concept that students themselves can have the power to make a real difference in the world requires a paradigm shift. This grant provided more than 140 students with that change of perspective and backed it up by inspiring them to continue change beyond our classroom.

The purpose of our grant was to begin the process of going paperless in the classroom. We would add digital paper, via our awesome new ReMarkable Tablets, to the tools we already had to help accomplish that goal. For a month, my students and I tracked how much paper we used when we accomplished academic goals using tradition means. To get our control data, at first we opted to use traditional science workbooks, wrote in regular notebooks for lab reports and lesson notes, took hard copy assessments, graphed data utilizing data sheets and the graph paper that I had to go out and purchase. To ensure my students could relate to the numbers we were using, I had my students weigh the paper instead of counting sheets as we had read that not all paper was created equal and wanted every bit of our use accounted for. We tracked every single sheet and it totaled an impressive 350 lbs. for only a month.

Even just this far into the process, my students noted how much of the paper they were using was not getting recycled when we were done with it. This was important because 30% of paper comes from recycled materials and a failure to recycle meant more of the environment would be impacted unnecessarily.

After we established our baseline, we got to the hard work of making changes. My students identified areas of savings that I hadn’t even thought of: the folders I would use to organize and keep their work in, my teacher editions (that would be abandoned for their digital twins), their binder dividers, bulletin board backgrounds (now replaced with repurposed cloth). My students were not just following my directions, conserving items I had listed; but looking at our classroom with new eyes. Assignments were given, completed, submitted, edited, graded and returned digitally via the Remarkables. Due to our enhanced ability to share work and complete digital assignments with the Remarkable Tablets collaboratively, my students found new ways of working together from home as well.

As we are finishing off the year and my student stand alongside the boxes of unused paper and workbooks they have saved, they feel like they have made a change in the world. To them, saving approximately a ton of paper over the course of 7 months feels like a big deal. The math demonstrated that we saved an entire classes’ weight in paper! They talk about the changes they are making at home, permanent changes they want to see in schools and businesses. They are inspired. The seemingly simple technology found in the Remarkables has not just provided my students with a year-long project, it has provided them with the opportunity to see that their personal choices impact more than just themselves. They have learned they can make a world of change!

grant photo

Original Grant Overview

Goal

Most of us have heard the phrase "be the change you want to see in the world". This grant provides students with the opportunity to not only be that change, but to analyze it as it happens. The successful funding of this grant will allow students to implement the use of digital paper in our classroom and study the environmental and cost benefits of going "paperless".

What will be done with my students

I teach students to love Earth and Space science and to love how it manifests in their everyday world. On any given day, my science students can be found using hands-on labs and working cooperatively. This type of learning sparks creativity, deep thinking and important interpersonal skills. It also, however, results in the consumption of more than a ream of copy paper every week and each student using at least 2 notebooks every year. Interestingly, this situation also provides the opportunity for us to create a year-long investigation where students develop an understanding of how they can actively work to support environmental sustainability, while continuing to learn the way they love to learn.
Currently, reading selections, lab reports, instruction sheets and any number of other activities all need to be photocopied and shared among students. Over the course of a school year, the paper costs are daunting and far exceed the paper allowances provided by the school. If you add to that the average 6th grader's propensity for misplacing, tearing or forgetting to submit said papers, the process can easily undermine the benefit of hands-on labs and cooperative learning. Fortunately (from a scientist’s perspective), each of these factors also represents data that students can easily track.
A solution to this problem lies in the use of digital paper. These are tablet-like devices that can be written on exactly like regular paper, however all the information is digitalized. Even though these devices utilize wi-fi services, students cannot use them for any purpose other than to write on the electronic documents I provide them with or that they create. They can answer questions, annotate text, draw models, fill in tables, and create graphs, and all without the temptation of surfing the web or the distraction of pop-up ads. The digital paper even gives students the same feeling as writing on paper with pencil. Students accomplish the exact same work they are doing now, only they do not use a single sheet of paper. All work is submitted electronically, eliminating lost or forgotten assignments and reducing the volume of paper floating around our classroom.
After implementing digital paper into our classroom students will track the number of digital documents they are using and compare that to how many pages of actual paper they would have consumed. Students will then determine the cost of the paper and the environmental toll it would have caused to produce and later recycle that paper. Students will draw conclusions on how the transition to digital paper has helped the environment, while making them work more efficiently.
As scientists debate migrating to digital notebooks in labs, we can provide students with this emerging technology, as well as the opportunity to discuss the pros and cons of usage, the process of transitioning and if there is a worthwhile balance between the use of digital and hard media.

Benefits to my students

Students often struggle to connect the theories of Earth and Space science to problems that exist in the real world. This project takes a situation that students partake in daily and turns it into a learning experience.
In addition to the benefits of learning about sustainability, students will become more tech savvy in the use of digital resources; develop greater proficiency in gathering, recording and interpreting data; and learn the basics of cost analysis. It is projected that in the first year, this project will impact the 140 students I currently teach. However, this technology will be permanently implemented in my classroom and continue to impact students in the future.

Budget Narrative

This grant covers the cost of 3 ReMarkable Tablets. Each tablet comes with a ReMarkable Marker, 8 replaceable tips and a charging cord. For more information on the product, you can reference https://remarkable.com/store/reMarkable-and-marker

To support the implementation of this technology in the form of a scientific investigation, it will require approximately 10 hours of curriculum writing and development. This will be provided as a match to the grant valued at $250 (10 hours @ $25 per hour).

Items

#	Item	Cost
1	ReMarkable Tablets 3 @ $599	$1,797.00
2	CCPS AirWatch network fee 3 @ $50	$150.00
	Total:	$1,947.00

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