How Portsmouth Teachers Use New Technology in the Classroom

I attended the annual fund-raising event of the Portsmouth Public Education Foundation last night at and really enjoyed discussing some of the recent projects with these forward-thinking  teachers.

Sandy Oxx, who teaches English at , discussed her use of the Kindle eBook reader in the classroom to download eBooks for her students, including classics and even textbooks.

Ms. Raposo (sorry, I forgot her first name)  was enthusiastic about her use of an iPad to engage autistic children and get them to focus on learning. Both were constrained by funds - Ms. Oxx had only five Kindle devices and Ms. Raposa had a single iPad - all that could be purchased with the PPEF grant, which are usually fairly small.

It seems ironic that even as our technology has provided new and highly useful tools for learning, we are increasingly unable to fund these new tools, at least for public schools.

I applaud the teachers for the efforts and hope that we can somehow find other sources for these technologies, which would make them available to all of our kids.

The new Kindle, for example, costs only $79 and can download books over any wireless network. This is less than a pair of sneakers!

Parents looking for Christmas presents might want to check this out further.