How We Learn: The iPad Giveaway

WHERE: Double Churches Elementary School in Columbus, Georgia

WHO: The fifth-grade class of Eric Crouch (GA '16)

WHAT THEY'RE DOING: Handing down the class's iPads to other classrooms at the school 

WHY: When the Muscogee County School District was considering bringing Chromebooks into some of its schools, they asked Eric to test them with his students and report on any kinks before making a bigger investment. That left the class's 30 iPads gathering dust. "I asked the class what we should do with them," says Eric. "They suggested that we give them to our fifth-grade peers: a veteran teacher with no experience in crowdfunding, and a new teacher who just started this year. That way both students and teachers would benefit, and it would bring a little more equity to the school." The class surprised their fellow fifth-graders with a total of 20 iPads. The remaining 10 will be used for special projects, including starting an iPad lab at a school in Kenya that Eric's class has been supporting with fundraising projects.

The iPad giveaway, says Eric, taught his students important lessons about generosity and provided an opportunity for them to mentor their peers as they shared the ways they had used the devices and walked the recipients through various apps. Eric's class, which incorporates storytelling and video production on a regular basis, created the video above to share their experience, writing the script and doing all the filming and production themselves. "Kindness is one of the values we stress throughout the year," says Eric. "My students thought this was a story that deserved to be told."