Dow Educational Enhancement Grant

Louisiana - December 05, 2005

Overhead projectors have been a staple in many classrooms across the nation for decades, but that is beginning to change.  Teachers across the country are being introduced to a new interactive teaching tool called an Elmo Visual Presenter.  The Elmo is a video capturing system that presents a clear image of objects ranging from opaque material to three dimensional objects. 

Joy Hobbins, the science teacher at Devall Middle School, was one of 11 teachers awarded a Dow Educations Enhancement Grant this year.  Hobbins was presented a $2,000 grant in May which she used to purchase an Elmo Visual Presenter system for her classroom. 

“This interactive tool will give 4-8 grade and special education students exposure to a variety of teaching strategies that will ensure active students participating during classroom instruction,” Hobbins said.

Hobbins purchased her visual presenter to replace her old and outdated overhead projector which had been used for many years. Before the purchase of her new Elmo, Hobbins would spend valuable time before and after school copying important information into transparencies to present to the class.  Her new visual presenter now allows her to project a non-transparent copy on a television screen for the entire class to see. 

“It allows me to show the students things only once. Before I would have to walk to each individual group and explain examples or experiments multiple times,” Hobbins expressed.  

Her visual presenter is also connected to a computer allowing her to show websites and computer models to the students generating interaction between the students during lessons. It assists teachers with measuring, assembling or dissecting a variety of objects to the students without causing a disruption. The Visual Presenter helps make the classroom become more versatile by creating new ways to present material to the students. This allows teachers to more actively involve students in their learning and incorporate visual models in their lessons. 

Hobbins teaches all the science classes at Devall Middle making the Elmo’s presence felt school wide. Students have already begun to reap the benefits of this piece of teaching technology with lesson dealing with the mapping of sun spots.  The Elmo will also be used in the upcoming semester to assist Hobbins in the dissection of frogs.

	Joy Hobbins of Devall Middle uses her Elmo Visual Presenter to show her middle school students how to map sunspots on a graph. She received a $2000 grant from Dow Louisiana Operations to purchase this current-technology teaching device.

For Editorial Information:

Gary Cambre
The Dow Chemical Company
(225) 353-8265