Youth Service America and Disney just launched a second round of Disney Minnie Grants to engage children and youth, ages 5-14 as community volunteers. The selected applications will receive $500 to support their youth-led service projects. The deadline is August 30 and projects must take place October 15-November 15, 2008. Grantees from the first round of Disney awards of 2008 are eligible to apply. Click here for more information and application materials.
I just got an email from the MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) project. MIT OpenCourseWare puts the entire MIT curriculum online, free of charge. The materials are excellent, and it’s been hailed as one of the top resources of its kind and an example of why “free is the future.”
The email explains all this, and goes on to explain that their publishing and review cycle costs money. It costs money to check the copyrights and get permissions. It costs money to videotape professors, edit the video, and post it online. Bandwidth and servers are not free.
“In total, it costs about $4 million each year to support OCW.”
The email continues with some examples of how courses are helping people around the globe in worthy projects. But guess what comes next…
MIT is committed to keeping OCW open and free to all, everywhere. You know the value of OCW to yourself and how the materials offer a greater value to humankind. And now you know the cost. Your contribution of $25, $50, $100 –– or whatever amount is right for you –– directly supports the production and distribution of high quality MIT course materials.
Please invest in yourself and your world. Click here to make your donation now.
Now really, people…
The MIT 2007 Financial Report shows an endowment of $9 billion dollars (yes, that’s 9,000 million dollars). In 2007, they took in cash gifts of over $330 million dollars. They really need my $25?
Honestly, it seems tacky. They decided to put their resources out there and generate a lot of publicity about being the wave of the future. Now they are looking for someone else (namely me) to help foot the bill?
But no, not just me. According to Wired Magazine back in 2002, “The William and Flora Hewlett and the Andrew W. Mellon foundations ponied up a total of $11 million for the first two-year phase. (MIT kicked in another $1 million.) Those organizations are likely to continue supporting the initiative, which is expected to require an additional $20 million or so before the rest of the courses are posted by the end of 2006.”
So they asked for money, so what?
I HATE complaining about this, because the MIT materials ARE truly excellent. People around the world can learn from the top lecturers in the field. Every high school educator and interested student should check out the Highlights for High School section of the MIT OpenCourseWare site. There are fabulous multimedia resources, really innovative courses like furniture making and international development, and terrific support materials.
I applaud MIT for finding a way to make all this available AND creating a quality product. The problem isn’t the materials, or even MIT asking for money. (I’m slightly peeved by them asking ME for money, but hey, at least they are being honest about the need to fund their project.)
Free costs money
The problem is that the rest of the world is pretending that because there is no cost to use courseware resources, there is no cost to create these resources.
This particular “free” cost $20 million dollars (probably more!) to get started, and now needs $4 million a year to keep going. Doing some admittedly rough math based on the 1,800 courses online gives food for thought. Each course cost $11,000 to put online, and needs an additional $2,000 per year to keep it up there.
What does this say about the real viability of open courseware in general?
I have to say I’m still struggling with this concept. In this case, MIT is trying to figure out how to expand their influence to become a world-wide leader in education. They obviously made a conscious decision to spend a lot of money to preserve the integrity of their brand by delivering top quality (and therefore expensive) resources. Now they will start to find out what access to this market really means.
In Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business (Wired Magazine 2/25/08), Chris Anderson says, “Technology is giving companies greater flexibility in how broadly they can define their markets, allowing them more freedom to give away products or services to one set of customers while selling to another set.” With OpenCourseWare, MIT is trying to expand its market beyond a few thousand students, a few company research partners, and past the usual academic boundaries to the entire world. It’s an interesting gamble.
In contrast, many other free open courseware and open content libraries sacrifice quality to lower their initial costs. They rely on users to contribute and edit content, but without a guiding editorial hand, the quality will be variable and the coverage sketchy. The tension between these approaches is yet to be resolved.
What an interesting world we live in!
Sylvia
Find more grants like this at the State Education Agency K-12 Service-Learning Network (SEANet) website:
Young People Invited to Submit Earth-Saving Ideas for Lorax Challenge
Deadline: May 31, 2008
Dr. Seuss Enterprises and Ashoka’s Youth Venture, in partnership with Earth Island Institute, have announced the Lorax Challenge, an opportunity for people between the ages of 12 and 20 across the United States to turn their ideas for helping to save the planet into reality.
The challenge invites teams of young people to create action plans for their earth-saving ideas.
To be considered for the Lorax grant, a venture team must be youth-created, -led, and -managed; be community-benefiting; be structured as a lasting organization (meaning not just a one- time event, but rather an ongoing entity such as a new school club, a business, or a new community organization); involve a strong team (meaning at least two people) with clear, attainable goals and budget and the commitment to lead their venture; and have at least one “Ally” — a supportive adult who guides and encourages the team.
Selected teams will receive funding of up to $1,000 each to turn their ideas into a reality. In addition, five grand-prize winners will receive a free trip to the University of Florida for a weekend of activities, learning, and fun. (Please note that only high school students are eligible for the Grand Prize.)
Visit the Youth Venture Web site for complete program information and application procedures.
Middle School Teachers Invited to Submit Ideas for Live Green Grant Program
Deadline: May 15, 2008
The Live Green Teacher Grant program, a Discovery Education program presented by General Motors challenges middle school teachers to develop innovative ideas for furthering environmental and energy sustainability. Participating teachers will identify an issue or problem, create a plan to address it, and integrate the topic into classroom teaching.
Forty grants of $1,000 each will be awarded to teachers for the most forward-thinking ideas. Twenty of the grants will be awarded to teachers whose schools are located within fifty miles of a General Motors plant; the other twenty grants will be awarded to teachers whose schools are located elsewhere in the United States. In addition, the forty recipients will be given access to an online professional development program designed to help them reach their school’s specific green initiatives, including a free digital camera to document and share the experience.
The program is open to legal U.S. residents 18 years of age and older and who are employed as middle school teachers (grades 5-9) in accredited public schools in the United States that are organized and primarily operated for educational purposes, and are considered tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the IRS Tax Code or are registered as a public school with the National Center for Educational Statistics.
Visit the Live Green Web site for complete program guidelines and application procedures.
Newspaper Association of America Foundation to Support Middle and High School Student Newspaper Projects
Deadline: May 16, 2008
The Newspaper Association of America Foundation encourages middle and high schools to partner with professional newspapers in their communities and seek funding to start, relaunch, or revitalize student newspapers, whether online or in print.
All public and private schools serving grades 7 through 12 and working in partnership with daily or nondaily professional newspapers are eligible to receive Student/Newspaper Partnership Grants from the NAA Foundation. Schools are also encouraged to seek a university or a college as an additional partner. Funding
priority is given to startup student newspapers. However, grant applications to relaunch or revitalize former or current programs also will be considered. The NAA Foundation especially welcomes grant applications from urban, rural, or minority-majority schools.
The NAA Foundation will fund up to twelve partnerships in 2008-09. Each partnership may receive up to $5,000 in Year One, plus an additional $2,500 in Year Two. Grant funds may be used for equipment, software, adviser training, and printing.
Visit the NAA Foundation Web site for complete program information and application procedures.
Asia Society and Goldman Sachs Foundation Invite Applications for Youth Prizes for Excellence in International Education
Deadline: June 12, 2008
The Asia Society and the Goldman Sachs Foundation have announced the 2008 Youth Prizes for Excellence in Inter national Education. Up to five winners will be selected to receive up to $10,000 each as well as an all-expense-paid trip to New York City in November 2008 to receive their prize.
The 2008 competition asks students to create an in-depth written essay or multimedia feature examining a social or economic issue that has relevance to them in a global context. In the essay category, students will compare and contrast how the issue affects their community and a community abroad, as well as create recommendations for what lessons the two communities could learn from each other. In the multimedia category, students will explore how a global problem or challenge affects their life as an individual, as a member of their local community, and/or as a global citizen.
Visit the Asia Society’s Ask Asia Web site for the contest questions, eligibility rules, guidelines and helpful hints, and submission instructions.
Sylvia
I’m heading off to Palm Springs to attend California CUE (Computer Using Educators) starting Thursday.
CUE is always a great event, a chance to meet GenYES and TechYES teachers from all over California. California has several districts participating in the GenYES and TechYES programs, some for 3 years now, many funded by EETT (Title 2d). The funding is about to be released for 08/09 (Round 7), so hopefully we will see more California schools join this very successful program. Round 7 continues to emphasize student achievement and technology literacy in grades four through eight with expanded access to technology, electronic resources, professional development, and enhanced communications — exactly what GenYES and TechYES do.
CA EETT Round 7 - how GenYES and TechYES meet EETT goals.
There has been a lot of bad budget news in California recently, so this new competitive EETT funding is a small ray of sunshine in the Golden State.
My CUE Sessions
Wednesday is EdubloggerCon West 2008 - the growing trend of “unconference” where the grass-roots efforts of the community determine the program and day’s events. I’m really looking forward to meeting California educators who are embracing new tools and technology to inspire students.I’ll be around CUE until Saturday - hope to see you there!
Sylvia
The Hamilton-Fulton-Montgomery (HFM) BOCES in New York has been awarded a $650,000, two-year Enhancing Education Through Technology grant that in part will give middle school students the chance to teach their teachers about technology.
Area teachers and students from 30 public and private middle schools in the HFM BOCES and Washington-Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex (WSWHE) BOCES region will collaborate to use technology as a tool to improve student performance in English language arts, mathematics and science. The state is offering this grant to help meet the federal goal that all students will demonstrate technology literacy by the end of eighth grade.
Generation YES is partnering with the HFM and WSWHE BOCES and 30 participating districts to develop and sponsor active New York State Student Technology Leader clubs. This summer, selected middle-school students will attend a week-long camp where they will learn leadership strategies to assist their peers in demonstrating their technology literacy. The students will also gain skills to assist their teachers on how to infuse technology into classroom lessons with the goals of sustaining student interest and improving student achievement.
See the full press release on HFM BOCES website.
We are proud and excited about this opportunity to bring so many of our models together in one integrated effort. More as this unfolds!
Sylvia
This is a summary of the NYSCATE presentation I did last week along with the slides. Several people requested copies of this presentation, so it’s in a couple of formats linked at the end of this post.
New York just requested that all districts report the percentage of students who are technology literate and also the teachers. This data will now be part of the Basic Educational Data System (BEDS.) There was plenty of discussion at the conference about what this meant, and how it would impact technology in schools. I heard two interesting comments:
Of course, this is in response to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate that every 8th grader be technology literate. New York is just one of many states figuring out what this will mean.
So this led to quite a bit of interest in TechYES, our student technology literacy certification model. In the TechYES model, students complete projects to show their technology literacy. The TechYES student guide leads the s
tudents through the process that results in projects aligned to the new ISTE NETs standards, and the teacher materials, handouts, and videos helps teachers implement it. Authentic assessment is used to assess the projects, and a peer mentoring training program helps create a cadre of students who will help run the program.
TechYES is the only structured project-based model of technology literacy assessment and certification available for students in grades 6-9. It can work as a supplement to a tech elective, or can be part of core curriculum classes. And like all Generation YES models, TechYES is based on research, proven in real schools, and validated with independent evalutations. There is much more information on the TechYES site.
Hopefully the slides will be helpful - sometimes it can be easy to see a presentation and think, “that’s great!” but when you get back to school, you just can’t quite explain it to everyone. I’ve added some notes to some of the slides, so hopefully it makes sense! NYSCATE did say they were recording this session, so maybe at some point there will be audio for it as well.
Here are the major points:
Files:
Links:
Sylvia
Here are two contests that reward student action:
Action For Nature Offers International Young Eco-Hero Awards
Deadline: February 28, 2008
Action For Nature, a nonprofit organization that encourages young people around the world to carry out individual environmental action projects, presents the International Young Eco-Hero Awards to recognize the individual accomplishments of young people (ages 8-16) whose personal actions have significantly improved the environment.
Action For Nature will award cash prizes of up to $500 each to young Eco-Heroes for their outstanding accomplishments in environmental advocacy, environmental health, research, or protection of the natural world.
The applications will be judged according to several criteria, including but not limited to: originality, difficulty, organization, length of time devoted to the project, influencing/educating others, use of outside resources (e.g. library, experts, media, community leaders), degree of success in reaching goals, and the impact on the environment. Complete program information and application guidelines
Visit the Do Something website for complete program information and application forms.
Sylvia
We are so proud!
Jonas Salk High-Tech Academy in the San Juan School District (Sacramento, California) is featured in the Sacramento Bee as a technology success story. Jonas Salk is a double-duty Generation YES school, using both the GenYES and TechYES progrms. We’ve watched the amazing work their GenYES students have been doing to support teacher use of technology and how their TechYES students have stepped up to mentoring their peers in tech literacy to receive TechYES certifications.
The story, Technology reboots student interest: Test scores show a 33-point jump for Jonas Salk chronicles the turnaround of Jonas Salk from a campus struggling with high teacher turnover and low student achievement, to one where both students and teachers are eager to show up every day. For them, technology was the key. And guess what, test scores improved as a result.
She doesn’t read aloud in class, and she doesn’t read at home. Yet here she sits, working through her lines in a newscast at Jonas Salk High-Tech Academy.
Replaying footage of the March installment of “JSTV” — once broadcast to 600 students — is bittersweet for technology teacher Jamal Hicks. It’s painful for an educator to watch the girl, in seventh grade then, fumble her way through the cue cards, knowing that her reading ability was somewhere around the third-grade level.
But she has returned to his media class for another year. Something about the camera makes her want to read. No matter how hard it might be.
“It is empowering,” Hicks says of the technology being used in his classroom. “I look at this (newscast), and I tell her, ‘You’re my hero.’ “
But it’s not just about technology. A big part of the philosophy in the renewal of Jonas Salk was to trust students and give them responsibilty for their own learning and the improvement of education for all. Incorporating GenYES into that vision means that Salk GenYES students are responsible for working with teachers so that technology benefits every classroom, regardless of the teacher’s level of comfort with technology. Trusting students to solve authentic problems and participate in the learning community means that teachers have more help to integrate technology in meaningful ways, and in turn, all students are empowered and engaged in learning.
“We believed in (the students), and they started to believe in themselves,” says Principal Jamey Schrey.
Jamal Hicks is the TechYES and GenYES coordinator at Jonas Salk. The No Child Left Behind Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) grant funded the GenYES program for Salk. By using GenYES, a structured model of student suppport for teachers using technology, Salk can report solid data back to the state to show success.
Jamal says, “GenYES has been vital to the success at Jonas Salk. Empowering the students through technology has really worked by giving the students an important reason to learn technology and to stick with it. Many of them are used to avoiding work when they find it difficult. But because they are responsible for teaching teachers about technology, they don’t want to give up. It instills high expectations and gives them satisfaction when they finish. This carries into their approach to other classes and their schoolwork.”
Congraulations to Jamal, the students and staff at Jonas Salk for all your hard work getting some well-deserved attention and respect!
Sylvia
Part 1: The Contest - MiGente con Mente
A national essay contest open to Latino youth with a grand prize of $10,000 cash for use towards a college education is offered by MiGente.com. a social networking site for Latinos, and DeVry University. Students are asked to write (in 750 words or less) “why education is important to you and to the Latino Community.” In addition to the grand prizewinner who receives $10,000, nine other finalists will each receive a $1,000 cash prize to use toward a college degree program.
The competition is open to future college students nationwide and the essay deadline is August 19, 2007. (Submission details here.)
Part 2: Thoughts about this contest
When I received this announcement from a PR firm, I was torn about posting it here. It’s a good thing to give money to kids for college. But the essay topic, well, in a word, “OY!” So I thought, why not address both?
In my recent post What is Student Voice?, I responded to some of the calls for student participation at educational conferences, and wrote about about the fact that student voice is about more than simply listening to students. It is about authentic student action. “Finding your voice” is a metaphor for finding the power within yourself to change your world. In many instances, I see student panels pulled together where students are trotted out for an hour, applauded for saying what we expect them to say, and then sent back home. This contest, while well-intentioned, is an example of the same kind of condescending nod to students that too often passes as “listening to student voice.”
Really, what does a high school student know about the importance of higher education other than what they’ve been told is the right answer for essays like this. Everyone “knows” that going to college is a good thing. I’m not saying these kids probably don’t believe it, but hellooo - the essay is to win money for college! This is just a lazy adult fantasy about teen-age thinking and motivation.
The contest rules require an applicant to not only express their educational aspirations or need of financial assistance, but to speak for an entire community. This is a heavy burden to place on the shoulders of a high school senior. It’s manipulative and culturally coercive.
Finally, if you read the contest rules, as any good essay-contest writer would do, it’s even clearer what they are looking for.
“Finalists will be selected based on an evaluation of each Essay Submission’s message (20%), emotional impact(20%), poignancy(20%), writing style (20%) and sentence structure (20%).”
Poignancy! C’mon, who doesn’t know what that means? Poignancy and emotional impact combine for 40% of the score. The implied message is that Latino youth shouldn’t want to go to college to learn, but to right wrongs. Poignancy is about the past; emotional impact means that a reader better be made to cry.
Most kids who enter this contest are going to smell this topic and scoring system a mile away as a clear message that the essay should be conformist and safe, with a sob story that will make a single, warm tear roll down a judge’s face, then wrap up with an uplifting finale. This is performance art in which the student applicant is supposed to recite the proper cliches.
I’m sure this contest will produce many fine entries. I wish all the best to the kids who will spend their time polishing the hopeful combination of formulaic, sincere-sounding writing that is being asked of them. I wish the contest sponsors had spent the same amount of time thinking about the hidden subtext and inauthentic requirements of their contest.
Sylvia
Many technology-using educators realize that technology is not something you can teach in a vacuum, but that providing students with context and real-life projects makes learning come alive. Web 2.0 tools can greatly increase student ability to collaborate in global projects or develop their own voice by participating as equals in local projects. This means students can go beyond “tech skills” to authentic learning and citizenship that lasts a lifetime.
Marrying tried-and-true resources and research with new technology means that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel for every aspect of student projects. Having a well-established project to participate in may also alleviate some of the access issues that arise when introducing new technology tools for student use. It’s harder to argue that blogs or social networks are just time wasters when they are being used to discuss cultural issues with students in Tibet, or say that student email is unnecessary when students are key members of a city-wide safe water campaign.
One of the best collections of resources for connecting to or creating projects that can change children’s lives forever is the National Service Learning Clearinghouse website.
As an example, the National Service Learning Clearinghouse has a new K-12 Service-Learning Project Planning Toolkit available for download. This free PDF contains resources, guides and worksheets to help you and your students implement a well-organized project, including:
This website provides a wealth of resources, funding sources, and links to projects that are perfect for Web 2.0 and technology-enhanced activities.
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