On Thursday, we made our sixth school visit in a series of 10 while one of our team members is on a road trip around the country. So far, we’d visited schools in Vermont, Illinois, two in California, and Alabama. This sixth visit took place at the Socrates Academy Charter School in Matthews, NC as he made his way from Myrtle Beach to Charlotte. Andy met with Alexandria Killeen at Socrates Academy and gifted her with the Merge Cube donation. It was a nice “treat” for us to be able to deliver the Merge Cube to her on Halloween even though her students had been let out early that day (an awesome concept that we never got to enjoy)!
Alexandria applied for our EdTech grant back in April, wanting to bring more robotics and coding to her students, who range from kindergarten to fifth grade. Though the school serves students from kindergarten all the way up through 12th grade, Alexandria works primarily with the younger students, but hasn’t been able to do much in terms of tech education because the school has always had a very limited amount of access to technology. In fact, she even said in her application that the devices they usually use are approaching 10 years old!
Luckily, Socrates Academy was on the road trip route, so Andy made sure to visit Alexandria and her students towards the tail end of his trip. Also, the road trip is coming to a close in just a few days (this Thursday) and Andy still has four school visits to make. Anyway, the meeting took place on Thursday and Alexandria was excited to be able to have something new to introduce to her students the next day. She was also hoping that trick-or-treating wouldn’t be postponed because they were expecting a good amount of rain that night in the Charlotte area.
Alexandria is determined to equip her students with new literacies in different types of areas –specifically some coding literacy skills. While the Merge Cube doesn’t necessarily involve coding practice, it certainly can help them explore the world of augmented reality and allow them to build some skills in this realm. Since the Cube works with a number of different mobile devices, including phones and tablets, we’re hoping she’s able to integrate it easily in her lessons and let her know we’re available to offer guidance if she ever runs into any trouble.
Alexandria works with over 500 students since she is the school’s technology lab teacher and, though it’s a small donation of only one unit, the Merge Cube can definitely offer something for everybody. Each student visits Alexandria’s technology lab once a week and she said that she’s always looking for new tools to engage them and help them learn. The Merge Cube can definitely accomplish both of those goals, often helping get kids excited about learning in this new medium, and the content within the Merge EDU platform is geared towards a whole lot of the things they would be covering anyway.
In her application, for example, Alexandria mentioned wanting to use STEM tools to teach her students about the water cycle and evaporation. That’s right up the Merge Cube’s alley as the content within the various mobile apps covers a lot of the classic science topics, but in a more immersive and exciting way for students. Alexandria wants her students to be able to recognize the skills they gain from learning with technology and use them in their futures, ideally helping them see how they can be applied in various careers.
We’re definitely happy to be able to provide Alexandria and her students with a new Merge Cube to use in their tech lab. Especially after learning about the state of the school’s devices, we certainly hope this donation helps in a positive way! Alexandria is extremely dedicated to providing her students with real-world learning opportunities, making the trip to Matthews very rewarding. To keep up with our other road trip updates and to read about some of the other stops we’ve made, be sure to check out the News & Updates section of our blog.