DonorsChoose
lborkowski | October 26, 2010As you may have noticed if you read other science blogs, several bloggers are highlighting projects that need a little cash to bring science alive for students. DonorsChoose.org lets public school teachers post requests for classroom materials -- from dictionaries to dissection kits -- and collects donations through its website. Once a project reaches its funding goal, DonorsChoose delivers the materials to the school.
If you can spare a few dollars, this is a worthwhile cause. The ScienceBlogs page is here, so you check out all the projects these bloggers are supporting. Here are a few of…
grrlscientist | January 4, 2010tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty
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Do you remember our fund-raising effort for impoverished American science classrooms through Donors Choose? Well, here's a really lovely thank you to one of my readers from one of our classrooms!
sciencewoman | November 1, 2009WOOT! In the month of October, 33 Sciencewomen readers, with a little help from HP, donated $3612 to deserving public school students around the country. We funded projects in California, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, North Carolina, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, Oklahoma, Texas, Georgia, Virginia and Utah.
As rewards for all your generosity, we've got several t-shirts from Yellow Ibis to give away, but before we do, here's a couple pieces of logistics.
HP provided $200,000(!) in matching funds for contributions to the social media challenge. Each…
sciencewoman | October 30, 2009This week Minnow and I are pleased to honor the first request from a DonorsChoose Challenge giver. (There's still time, donate enough to complete a project, email me the receipt and you too can request a story.) I'll admit to being pretty excited when this request came it, because it was perfectly seasonal...and we already had the book in our queue. Today's featured book is Pumpkin Circle: The Story of a Garden, by George Levenson and exquisitely photographed by Shmuel Thaler.
But before we can get to the book, let's tell you about our trip to the pumpkin farm, where we learned some factoids…
sciencewoman | October 29, 2009There's a few days left in our October DonorsChoose challenge, and even after that there are many more great projects out there waiting for our help.
A few weeks ago, wonderful educator-science-historian-cultural-studies-expert-mother-blogger Leslie Madden-Brooks responded to a plea to help fund some projects, and I was deeply moved by what she wrote to the classroom, so I wanted to share it with you...
I gave to this project because I had such a tough time learning math, and I wish I had been able to develop this kind of mathematical and critical thinking through reading interesting authors…
grrlscientist | October 28, 2009tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty
This is a poll. I will show you two pictures, and ask you to tell me which picture is more symmetric. Your votes are tabulated after you've clicked on that picture:
Now that you've participated in my little poll, I want to share some information about my own fund-raising efforts for DonorsChoose:
Those pictures tell us that collectively, we've:
provided resources to 550 students
supported 66 hours of instruction and homework
Oh boy! Sixty-six hours of classroom instruction AND HOMEWORK?? That's almost demonic…
grrlscientist | October 28, 2009tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty
Here's the latest news from DonorsChoose: collectively, all of the blog writers and the 4,038 citizen philanthropists who participated in the Social Media Challenge have raised more than $565,000 to help more than 99,000 students in public schools throughout the US!!! I think this is amazing! JUST the ScienceBloggers team has raised an astonishing $54,358 from 244 citizen philanthropists (my blog has raised $5,646.31 so far -- last year, the ScienceBlogs team raised $38,000 and my blog raised $2,884.55)
But there's still…
grrlscientist | October 26, 2009tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty
I am so lucky to be enjoying a flood of thousands of unique visitors right now, so much so that my blog will surpass the 4 million visits mark in an hour or less. To celebrate this incredible landmark, I ask you -- all of you -- to donate to a DonorsChoose classroom! DonorsChoose is a non-profit fund-raising agency that provides money to teachers throughout the United States to help "their kids" improve their education. I chose specific classrooms to help -- my "Challenge" students -- that focus on classrooms that are (a…
grrlscientist | October 25, 2009tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty
How many of you are Harry Potter fans, or know someone who is? How about all those millions of kids in the United States who are crazy about Harry Potter and his amazing owl, Hedwig? So don't you think this makes owls a special bridge between kids and the worlds of imagination and literature and nature and science? I certainly think it does, so of course, I think this wonderful DonorsChoose project, Who Gives a "Hoot" About Owls! is a superb classroom lesson to interest this high-poverty classroom of 120 third graders in…
grrlscientist | October 24, 2009tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty
I am so excited and so proud of YOU, my beautiful readers, for donating your precious and limited dollars to help kids in impoverished classrooms continue their journey towards claiming a brighter future through education. As of a few minutes ago, we raised the minimum of $2500 in DonorsChoose funds, which qualifies us for at least $2000 in matching funds from Hewlett-Packard! However, I have a confession to make: I am a selfish bastard because I want MORE MORE MORE of those precious HP funds to share with impoverished…
grrlscientist | October 24, 2009tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty
I have a confession to make: I love ant farms. I love them so much that one of my readers bought me an ant farm to cheer me up shortly after I lost my funding and was experiencing a long run of bad luck in my job search -- the financial stress and loss of self esteem were almost unbearable. But even though I am an adult (well, I'm told I look like an adult), I found hours of joy watching "my ants." But imagine how eye-opening an ant farm would be for a bunch of impoverished second-graders who have never seen or…
grrlscientist | October 23, 2009tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty
I thought DonorsChoose would send me all my donors' contact information, but apparently they don't, so I need you to send me a copy of the email receipt you received from DonorsChoose so I can enter you in as many prize drawings as possible. Of course, I also need your mailing address along with this receipt because I am leaving the country two weeks after this fund raising effort has ended, so I want to get everything mailed to you as soon as possible because I can't afford to mail prizes from Germany! (especially since…
grrlscientist | October 23, 2009tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty
One of my donors, Hewlett-Packard, has notified me that they are willing to provide my Challenge classrooms with an additional $2000 IF I manage to raise a total of $2500 by Sunday. That means we're only $514 away from being able to nearly double our ability to help impoverished classrooms throughout the United States! I've already donated $300, so I am completely tapped out, so I am asking you: please donate to my DonorsChoose classrooms!
In recognition of your kind gifts to help others, Princeton University Press is…
sciencewoman | October 23, 2009Don't worry, SciWo's storytime is coming later today. But first a word about our on-going DonorsChoose challenge. Along with 22 others, DonorsChoose has already given $50 to our challenge, and now they want to give more...based on how much we raise by Sunday. Here's the scoop:
Next week, we will distribute $200,000, the rest of HP's contribution, to all Social Media Challenge Giving Pages. But this time, your share will be calculated on a pro-rata basis based on the amount you've raised by Sunday. What does that mean? Now is the time to motivate your readers, followers, friends, fam and…
grrlscientist | October 23, 2009tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty
I am focusing on this project, For the Birds!, because it targets fifth grade kids, the perfect age to get them interested in birds for life. Further, this is a high-poverty classroom in NYC (my home), and I wish to help the kids here develop an appreciation for the glorious bird life that migrates through here and resides in this large city. But this is an expensive project because they are asking for 15 binoculars for a classroom of 30 kids, so I donated $300 to this project to get it started. Will you donate money to…
grrlscientist | October 22, 2009tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty
One of my donors, Hewlett-Packard, has notified me that they are willing to provide my Challenge classrooms with $2000 IF I manage to raise a total of $2500 by Sunday. That means we're only $1000 away from being able to nearly double our ability to help impoverished classrooms throughout the United States! I've already donated $300, so I am completely tapped out, so I am asking you: please donate to my DonorsChoose classrooms!
In recognition of your kind gifts to help others, Princeton University Press is offering 2…
grrlscientist | October 21, 2009tags: SEM, ASPEX Corp, DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty
Would you like a FREE, Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) image of an object that you've always wanted to see really close up? Stephanie at ASPEX Corporation has offered a free benchtop SEM scan as a prize to one lucky person who donates to my DonorsChoose Challenge! If you win, you could send them anything to scan (as long as it fits into an envelope); lunch room mystery meat, a fingernail clipping, or even a dead insect .. anything you'd like to see a picture of under a powerful microscope. Here's an…
grrlscientist | October 20, 2009tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty
I am focusing on this project, For the Birds!, because it targets fifth grade kids, the perfect age to get them interested in birds for life. Further, this is a high-poverty classroom in NYC (my home), and I wish to help the kids here develop an appreciation for the glorious bird life that migrates through here and resides in this large city. But this is an expensive project because they are asking for 15 binoculars for a classroom of 30 kids, so I donated $300 to this project to get it started. Will you donate money to…
grrlscientist | October 20, 2009tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty
One of my donors, HP, has provided $200,000 to the DonorsChoose Social Media Challenge BUT to win these funds for our science classrooms, all of us must donate more money. Here's what DonorsChoose writes;
HP has been tracking the competition closely and has already made a $50 contribution to your page, as a result of all of your hard work. The good news? HP wants to make yet another contribution to your Giving Page. The more you raise by this Sunday, October 25, the more HP will contribute!
Next week, we will distribute…
grrlscientist | October 19, 2009tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty
Four projects in my "Biology is Life" Challenge have been fully funded, and the teachers for each project have posted thank you letters that you can read here: The Viking Shark Project, the Cow Eye Dissection project, the Please Pass Me the Scalpel, Nurse project, and the A Room Without A View project.
We need to do more to help impoverished kids, so please check out the unfunded proposals in the "Biology is Life" Challenge that still need your help by clicking on the above widget.
And don't forget, Princeton University…