Little Silver – The Red Bank Regional Education Foundation recently presented the Red Bank Regional (RBR) Board of Education with a check for more than $28,000 to fund a mobile Apple classroom for the school district’s world language classes.
The funds will purchase a mobile IPad cart equipped with 35 iPads and three MacBooks with a two-year protection program and a voucher to purchase apps that foster the acquisition of foreign language. The new Apple Mobile classroom is expected to be operational in September.
“This level of accessibility into other cultures and languages is completely unprecedented,” said RBR Assistant Principal Will Smith, who researched the program on behalf of the foundation.
The Apple classroom enables students to interact in the language they are learning in task-based activities such as reserving a hotel room, obtaining weather forecasts or driving directions. Research suggests that the authentic use of language in this way serves as a boon to the language acquisition process.
In addition, the Apple classroom will also connect student and staff with foreign language newspapers, pronunciation programs, videos, podcasts, classrooms from other countries and streaming online radio.
“The foundation is delighted to fund this very valuable educational tool,” said Paul Noglows, foundation president. “Students will hold in their hands a dynamic new means of participating in a language lesson, thus encouraging a truly collaborative instructional model. Also, since all students at RBR are required to take a world language, this grant will potentially positively impact the entire student body.”
Over the past few years, the education foundation has funded nearly $100,000 in grants that have a direct positive impact upon the classrooms, students and faculty of RBR.
Additional information about the foundation is available on it’s webpage at http://rbrhs.org/Community/EF/default.aspx or by emailing RBR.Ed.Found@comcast.net.
