1. Description of Our Community
Our community of Farmington, Missouri is located about 60 miles south from St. Louis, Missouri. Farmington has a population of approximately 16,000 residents as of July 2011. Farmington is located in the county of St. Francois. St. Francois County is located in the Mineral Area region of Missouri. St. Francois County has a population of approximately 65,000 residents as of July 2011. Our CyberFair project interviews were taken from about a 60 mile radius around Farmington. Our school, St. Paul Lutheran School, has about 247 students in K-8. St. Francois County population info from: Google Public Data. Farmington, MO population info from: Google Public Data.
2. Summary of Our Project
Our CyberFair project entry this year is titled 'Coding the Future.' We are sharing online resources to learn coding, providing information about the Parkland Programmers organization, 4H Robotics Club, coding history, careers and salaries as well as interviews with professional programmers. Parkland Programmers is a community program that teaches kids to code using Scratch. This is a positive thing for kids to be learning because in the next 10 years there will be 1.4 million jobs open in this career field in the United States.
3. Our Computer and Internet Access
A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:more than 50%
B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:more than 6
C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection
D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:more than 6
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
We didn’t have too many problems that we needed to overcome, but we did have a couple that put us behind on getting our website finished as soon as we wanted. First of all, we got a lot of snow this year; it was a lot more snow than what we usually get. Since there was a lot of snow, we had to take many days off of school, and a couple days that school was in session, a few people were still not able to get here due to the snow and ice at their homes. Then the second problem we had was trouble receiving responses on our Google Form. However, in the end we ended up getting five interviews from programmers that are now on our Interviews page!
5. Our Project Sound Bite
As we have collected information on coding we have come to realize how much it has changed not only our community, but the world. Technology is a large part in the lives of everyone, and each and every part of it involves some sort of program. The amount of coding that goes into every program or app is incredible. As a part of our project we learned to code ourselves. We hope that by providing this resource people in our community and around the world will learn about coding, too; maybe by deciding to learn how to code themselves.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
Most standards of the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) NETS (National Educational Technology Standards for Students standards http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students/nets-student-standards-2007.aspx are met by this CyberFair project. We also follow guidelines as presented by iNACOL standards for learning (International Association for K-12 Online Learning http://www.inacol.org/research/nationalstandards/) Research and collaboration online allowed us to apply our digital skills. We will be better prepared for the future by securing these standards as daily classroom practices.
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