Near the end of our 2007 DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge, I received a generous donation from a reader who asked if I could write a poem about narcolepsy.
I’m a little late in paying up, but better late than never. Here it is:
Category Archives: Philanthropy
Two more ScienceBloggers mount DonorsChoose challenges!
See, I told you more ScienceBlogs bloggers would jump into the fray for our DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge 2008.
Challenges have been mounted by:
A Blog Around the Clock (challenge here)
The Quantum Pontiff (challenge here)
Watch the ScienceBlogs leaderboard to see if they catch up.
In other news, the motherboard would seem to indicate that the tech blogs, mommy blogs, topical/local blogs, and BlogHer are currently leaving us in their dust. I wonder if fans of science will remedy that …
DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge 2008: fund classroom proposals, help kids.
It’s October, which means ScienceBlogs bloggers are, once again, participating in the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge. The idea behind the drive is simple: we’re appealing to you, our readers, to help public school teachers across the U.S. fund proposals for classroom supplies, activities, and field trips. As I wrote at the start of our very first drive in 2006:
Classroom teachers: get a jump on the school year (and your DonorsChoose proposal)!
Sure, we still have about a week of July left, but those days are getting shorter and soon the classrooms will be filling up again.
Which means that it’s a pretty good time for public school teachers (in the U.S.*) to start thinking about what they’d like to accomplish in those classrooms, and whether submitting a classroom project proposal to DonorsChoose could help them secure the funds to make exciting ideas into real educational experiences.
Before the students are lining up outside the classroom, check out the DonorsChoose blog, which includes:
‘Give one, get one’ XO offer extended through December 31.
The One Laptop Per Child program’s Give One Get One promotion (which I blogged about back in November) has been extended through the end of December 31 (today!!).
If you’re in the U.S. or Canada, for $399 ($200 of which is tax deductible) you can donate a spiffy new and super-cool XO laptop to a child in a developing country and get one for yourself.
Santa (who apparently reads this blog) availed himself of the offer and brought an XO laptop to the sprogs. It’s set up with Linux (a plus for many people), although some bits are a little buggy (but free upgrades are expected to be available soon). The favorite feature right now is the video recording capability via the built in camera and microphone.
It’s a neat little feat of engineering, and the OLPC program has a vision of bringing education (not just technology) to families (not just kids) in the developing world. If you’re trying to do a last bit of philanthropy before the calendar turns over, this is an option worth considering.
A bit of holiday shopping that brings a laptop to a child in the developing world.
I just found out about something cool for which the window of opportunity closes in eleven days:
Through November 26, the One Laptop Per Child project has a Give One Get One deal (in the U.S. and Canada) wherein you can donate a spiffy new and super-cool XO laptop to a child in a developing country and get one to give to a child in your life (although, presumably, your inner-child might persuade you to keep it for yourself if you aren’t acquainted with any kids).
The XO laptop is an impressive feat of engineering, and distributing these beauties is part of a plan that really speaks to me:
OLPC’s mission is to provide a means for learning, self-expression, and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education. While children are by nature eager for knowledge, many countries have insufficient resources to devote to education–sometimes less than $20 per year per child (compared to an average of $7,500 in the United States). By giving children their very own connected XO laptop, we are giving them a window to the outside world, access to vast amounts of information, a way to connect with each other, and a springboard into their future. And we’re also helping these countries develop an essential resource–educated, empowered children.
The Give One Get One offer won’t fit everyone’s budget — it’s $399 to donate an XO and to get your own (although $200 of that is tax deductible), which means that you’re actually paying for two of the laptops rather than magically scoring a freebie. But, in the event that it does fit your budget, it strikes me as an opportunity to help a kid’s possibilities get bigger while (paradoxically) making the world a little smaller and more interconnected.
Blogger Challenge 2007: how we did
The results of our drive to raise funds for teachers and students with DonorsChoose are, in a word, astounding. Ginny reported the morning-after stats:
Getting involved with more than your wallet: strategies for supporting science and math education.
With just over 10 hours left in our ScienceBlogs/Donors Choose Blogger Challenge 2007, it’s time to think about what happens next. Supporting classroom teachers with your funds is a noble gesture, but it’s just a start.
To really get math and science literacy (and enthusiasm) to the levels we’d like to see, your time and personal involvement can do an awful lot. In this post you’ll find ideas from ScienceBloggers about how to turn your good intentions into action.
Waiting for the last minute to donate to the Blogger Challenge?
It looks like you get 1440 extra minutes. And you can blame Presidential candidate (in South Carolina) Stephen Tiberius Colbert. From the DonorsChoose blog:
…our site was flat-out overwhelmed by the massive traffic that resulted from Stephen Colbert and Craig Newmark’s announcement around midnight on Thursday, October 18.
As we scrambled to increase capacity, we continued to receive big spikes in web traffic from the re-airings of that Colbert show on Friday, October 19 in the morning, afternoon, and early evening, and across US time zones.
Since no new Colbert episodes were airing last week (October 22-26), Comedy Central re-ran the previous week’s episodes! These additional re-airings generated many more big spikes in web traffic, mostly in the 24 hours starting on last Wednesday at midnight: between daily re-airings and the staggered showings across time zones, we think the Colbert show that introduced DonorsChoose.org may have aired between 3 – 9 times during that 24 hour period. Amazing.
This was GREAT news for the teachers who use DonorsChoose.org to get much-needed resources for their classrooms. But not so great for our web servers.
The DonorsChoose tech team think they have a healthy, happy system again. And it’s looking like the “last minute” of the 2007 Blogger Challenge is being moved to the very last moment (11:59:59 PM) of November 1, Eastern time.
In light of this new information, I leave it to you to decide what to do. I’ll just point out that even hard-core procrastinators are not required to wait until the last possible moment.
Ten challenges met, ten still in play.
The 2007 DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge ends tomorrow, and ScienceBlogs readers have met (and exceeded) 10 of the 20 challenges we mounted, raising $47,705.
Here’s who’s left: