Our Eduporium Featured Educator series is certainly now in full swing and we have another EdTech success story to share! This week, we’re introducing everybody to Ashley Townsend, a K-5 STEM teacher at the Oak Grove Primary School in Louisiana. Using tech tools, like the Makey Makey among others, Ashley has helped create some amazing STEM and real-world learning experiences for her students over the last couple of years and truly empowered them to create some amazing projects!
Ashley Townsend
K-5 STEM Educator at the Oak Grove Primary School in Prairieville, LA
Q&A:
Please share any innovative EdTech project(s) you've completed as an educator or plan to complete.
A new policy prohibited educators from contracting with a video game truck would come to school for our Fun Day. Though they were disappointed, my fifth-grade group decided they would make their own games instead! Using the Makey Makey, Scratch, Code.org, and Google Slides, as well as a variety of repurposed items they collected themselves, we created and marketed games to comprise an entire Fun Day station!
What is a challenge you faced or are facing with your EdTech use as an educator? What resources did you use or are in need of?
My class is an enrichment course, which means students often have to miss it to complete make-up work or receive special services. And, since I teach 600+ students at my school, there is no opportunity to recover this lost time. Space is also an issue for me and other educators as I have up to 40 students in each class! I would love to have more Makey Makey’s and more Cubelets so that my students can work in smaller groups when we use these resources in learning.
What are some of the real-world skills you've seen your students develop through regular EdTech use?
I love using EdTech as a 21st century educator. EdTech has helped create a platform for my students to develop the ability to collaborate, communicate, and think critically and creatively by giving them opportunities to innovate and instill a growth mindset. Keeping projects open-ended with lots of room for creativity has increased their ability to self-motivate, not to mention given me opportunities to develop and model a growth mindset in myself!
These are the skills students need to take on 21st-century challenges—we don't know how the world or the workforce will look a decade or two from now. Our responsibility to students and the world is equipping them with skills and confidence to innovate in an ever-changing place.
What interests you most about Eduporium?
The Tips & Tricks blogs always keep me thinking! I love seeing the innovate ways in which educators across the country are engaging their students with technology.
We appreciate Ashley taking the time to speak with us and wish her continued success in STEM education! For more, follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Look out next Friday, too, as we introduce you to another hard-working and innovative educator on our blog!