It’s no secret that teachers are resourceful and have great ideas. With the right funding and the right idea, a teacher can start a revolution in the classroom, the community and the student. The only setback: funding isn’t always easy to obtain.  At WeAreTeachers, it is our constant goal to provide you with the support you need to be the best teacher you can be, and that is how our microgrant program was born. You give us your best ideas on an assigned topic, and we give you funding to make them happen, to the tune of $200 and a flip video camera for each of our ten grant recipients. Quantum Learning Technologies is sponsoring the current microgrant to support Student Engagement.

This summer, we partnered with Dell for a microgrant on Digital Learning and the results were fantastic. We received an overwhelming 220 submissions for the grant! You voted and picked the top ten submissions, and they became our Digital Learning Microgrant winners.

Each of these educators had interesting, unique ideas for using digital learning as an educational tool. Greg Barclay, an English teacher from South Fulton, TN won for his project “Blogging as Writing; Podcasting as Presenting.” He is very enthusiastic about how the microgrant will help his students.

“I think the act of producing podcasts will be greatly beneficial to my students,” Mr. Barclay stated via email, “Many of them do not even know what a podcast is. In addition to learning about a different kind of technology, they will also be learning about public speaking.”

For some of the recipients, the journey to winning the microgrant was as exciting as actually receiving the grant. Dallas, TX teacher and yearbook sponsor Michael Moran, whose project “We Are Woodrow” garnered the most online votes, said that the entire process was as beneficial as the grant itself.

“When something goes ‘viral,’ there is usually an element of luck, but the paths to popularity can be utilized to educate and inform. I hoped that I could use these tools to give people an opportunity to help kids. I’ll use this experience as much as I’ll use the award,” commented Mr. Moran.

Diane Davis, an Art teacher in Reading, MA and winner for her “Growing As An Artist” project, said there was added value and inspiration in looking at the other submissions.

“I loved the Shapes All Around Us project by Leigh Kraemer,” Ms. Davis explained,   “Although a preschool project, this is also a perfect art project. Rather than pointing out shapes in pictures, they are actively searching for shapes in the world around them. I could see this adapted in middle school art classes by having students search for elements and principles of art, or making color collages with monochromatic, complimentary, and analogous color schemes.”

The benefits of the microgrants have gone beyond the doors of the classroom, reaching into the entire community for winner Tanya Jacobucci, a Kindergarten teacher from Clearwater, KS. Ms. Jacobucci’s project, titled “Retired at Five- Traveling with Grandma,” connects her kindergartners with retired teachers.

“Since our project was announced as one of the winners, we’ve also had parents of our students show interest in taking the camera with them as they travel, so it’s starting to involve even more community members,” Ms. Jacobucci reported.

We are thrilled to see that the microgrants are not only helping to fund teachers’ ideas, but are reaching out to change students, unite communities and inspire teachers as well! We’ve now announced our new microgrant, a Student Engagement project sponsored by Quantum Learning Technologies, and it’s not too late to apply!

If you could take your students anywhere in the world, where would you go? To China, to see how a country with it’s enormous population can function? To Africa, to show them that there are still parts of the world where clean drinking water is a luxury? Opening our students’ eyes to cultural diversity is becoming increasingly important in a “Flat World” environment, and fortunately, with Web 2.0 technology, you won’t be on the hook for thirty round trip plane tickets.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could connect and collaborate with another teacher similar to you across the globe?  With WeAreTeachers’ Facebook application, I Am Teacher, we are connecting teachers both across the US and on a global scale to share ideas and expose their students to new cultures and ways of life without leaving the classroom. Through our searchable database of teachers, we can provide quick, accurate matches for you based on several different search criteria.

Recently, Candace Townsley, a Gifted and Talented teacher outside Tulsa, OK agreed to connect and collaborate with another teacher internationally and allow the process to be documented for this blog.

Candace was enthusiastic about global learning projects from the start and looked forward to finding the right teacher to work with.  She connected with Shelly Terrell, an EFL teacher in Stuttgard, Germany. Shelly was also a proponent of global learning outreach, saying “[Global learning] makes students aware of global issues, dispels stereotypes, opens students to cultural diversity & motivates students to collaborate on global issues.”

They connected via Facebook chat before moving the conversation to Skype, where the discussion turned to idea sharing. “We talked about what we teach, our various school systems, and brainstormed ideas and topics that would have the students use higher order skills,” recounted Shelly.

Candace described how they made plans to collaborate on a future project, “We decided that we would work on a project to assist in dispelling various stereotypes projected upon each culture. In doing so [students] will VIRTUALLY see how students really are in Germany/America.”

They made plans to bring their students together to create a lasting collaboration that they could revisit, so they are looking to create a wiki together this fall.  (Watch this space for updates!)

But Candace and Shelly are just two of millions of teachers who are reaching across the globe, motivating, inspiring and sharing with each other. In 2006, teachers Julie Lindsay (Qatar) and Vicki Davis (US) saw the need for giving their students a sense of global unity after reading Thomas Friedman’s popular book about globalization, The World is Flat. Davis and Lindsay created The Flat Classroom Project, a project that brings teachers and classes from across the world together using Web 2.0 technology such as Wikipages and Ning. This video was created to kick off their 2009 Classroom Conference and tells more about using social learning to connect students internationally.

We want to know what you are looking for in terms of connecting globally. Take a minute to fill out this quick survey and  let us know what tools you need to get a global outreach project started. WeAreTeachers would like to track other global learning projects and share the process and learnings with the WeAreTeachers community.

If you are itching to take the first step towards creating a global teacher to teacher partnership, go to Facebook and use our I Am Teacher application to find the right match for you, and leave us a comment to let us know how you’ve used I Am Teacher to take your students and yourself on an international adventure!

In an era when the President of the United States uses a Blackberry and computers are  becoming as necessary as number two pencils, digital technology is changing the way we live and learn.  The digital age has created an exciting new environment for us all, and innovative teachers like you are embracing and harnessing the power of digital learning to blow the walls off their schools and open up their classrooms to other educators all over the world. But sifting through all of the information about digital learning can take more time than a busy teacher has to spend, so we’ve found some great resources on the web to help you find new ways to incorporate digital technology into your classroom.

The case for digital learning is simple: your students live in a time of wikis, webinars and iChat. But how could this help them in the classroom?  This video shows what your digital learners expect of you in a Web 2.0 age.

At WeAreTeachers, we want to encourage you in your efforts to be a part of this digital revolution, both by providing you with the tools you need to keep up and through the teacher’s magic word: funding.  Through WAT microgrants, we are helping teachers get their big ideas out into the digital world-and the response has been phenomenal. Our current “Digital Learning “ microgrant sponsored by Dell, had over 200 submissions! From those 200 applicants, the community will vote to determine the top ten who will receive $200 and a flip video camera to share their project with the entire WeAreTeachers community. Have you had a chance to take a look at the microgrant applications?  It’s a great way to see what your peers are doing to bring their students into the Web 2.0 age. You are sure to be inspired!  What is so exciting about each of these teacher-submitted ideas is that they all demonstrate how digital learning empowers teachers to share their passion for reaching students in a fresh new way.

We are so proud of the astonishing response to this microgrant. What this tells us at WeAreTeachers is that you are excited about being on the forefront of using this technology, and we are thrilled to support you!

And we aren’t the only ones, many companies are hopping aboard the digital bandwagon. Everywhere you look, companies and organizations are standing up and taking notice of the need for digital content. NASA has a wonderful Digital Learning Network that was designed to help educators bring the wonder of space into the classroom.  PBS will be launching a fantastic digital learning library this fall, geared especially towards educators. The Digital Learning Commons is a nonprofit organization created with the sole intention of helping teachers find the best digital learning techniques to give their students an edge. Additionally, exciting programs are being developed like the Digital Learning Lab at UC Irvine, which is currently looking for educators to collaborate in a host of digital learning projects.

How do you use digital learning? Do you keep a blog? Have your students used wikis to research information? Have you thought about using a flip video camera like the ones we are including with our microgrants to collaborate and idea share with other teachers?  Is there an area that you’d love to see supported by a microgrant? We want to hear about it! Have you been inspired by an idea from our 200 applicants?  Your feedback is crucial, so please take a minute to leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.  We cannot wait to infuse your ideas and bring you more valuable teacher-generated content that will inspire, enlighten and empower you in the days to come!

Image by rosefirerising via Flickr

We’ve just started a new program at WeAreTeachers — MicroGrants.

We designed this program to be consistent with our philosophy and commitment to this important community:  Namely, we want to put teachers at the center of the Web 2.0 world, AND we want to work hard to be sure EVERYTHING we do has some value to the community and its members.

We were inspired by the idea of Micro-Loans. . . and the notion of what magic can happen when even small resources are placed in the hands of people who are in a position to make an immediate impact.  You may have heard of Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, the current Nobel laureate.  Yunus said the tiny loans distributed in the developing world, most of them to women, have already lifted 100 million people out of direst poverty and brought them the dignity of running small businesses, many of which eventually create jobs for others. These simple, sustainable businesses – weaving, raising chickens, selling groceries in small shops – are proven development vessels that can be launched with loans as small as $100.

SO — we considered — What might happen if we — through our relationships with businesses in our network — could secure corporate sponsors to help provide small grants directly to teachers, then track what they are able to do with this direct resource.  What happens when a real TEACHER — with a super idea, has enough money to, say take kids on a field trip, or buy some microscopes for a classroom, or a musical instrument for a Mariachi band?  And what if we also provide a simple Flip-video camera and ask him/her to let us know what happens with a video story?

We are pleased that our first such MicroGrant (sponsored by Alchemy Systems in Austin, Texas), is providing resources to promote Creativity.  We want to know what great ideas teachers have to keep creativity alive in the classroom — especially given the current focus on basic skills and testing that is crowding out the arts and other creative curriculum.

Here’s how it works.  Unlike other education grants that take an advanced degree and hundreds of hours to seek, our grant form is a single page form.  We don’t want big documents, just big ideas.  Once your idea is submitted, we’ll post all the entrants, and ask the WeAreTeachers community to vote — in true Web 2.0 form.  The best ideas will be selected, and winners will receive $200 to make a difference for kids, as well as a flip-camera to record their success.  We’ll ask teachers to submit their videos back to the community, so that great ideas can be shared.  Cool, eh?

We are looking for other MicroGrant areas you’d like to see us fund. If you are into creativity, submit for this grant.  Or send us a note and let us know what other areas you would like to see funded.  We’ll find a corporate sponsor, and keep this program going.

Small resources can make a huge difference IF applied where the ‘rubber meets the road’, and we think that’s right in the hands of our best teachers.

The impact of Web 2.0 on education is being felt from classrooms, to board rooms, to living rooms – but perhaps one of the most interesting (and promising) change has to do with learning content. The power of on-line community in education is driving changes in how learning content is . . .

•Developed and published commercially
•Created by expert teachers
•Distributed and sold
•Found and promoted

Perhaps one of the most interesting questions is –

Can teacher-developed content co-exist successfully with commercially available learning materials? In a connected world, I think the answer is a resounding YES, and here’s why:

1. ‘Chunks’ are better than ‘Hunks’ for many kids. That is, many students benefit from smaller units of learning (‘chunks’), versus traditionally available large systems or textbooks, which today’s IM-focused kids ignore. So teacher-made content –which is generally made in smaller pieces, can be a valuable part of what students consume.
2. Standards Based Curriculum is boring. Sorry to speak so bluntly, but the current focus on just standards and assessment is turning off kids by the droves. Great teachers are stepping up to fill in the gaps. Many are offering their own engaging experiences for kids — lesson plans that rely on blogging, cell phones, engaged discussion. This can be a great supplement to commercial material – which may still be required, but is just not sufficient anymore.
3. It’s not all about the classroom. Duh. Learning actually DOES occur everywhere, something the best teachers understand well. And learning even occurs outside traditional academic areas. So teacher-developed content to support learning in yoga, music, fitness, etc is becoming just as critical to our well-being as content for reading and math. It’s a big world, and the human experience is equally large.
4. The ‘Long Tail’ also wags for education. The current rage of ‘selling less to more’ can mean financial success and broad exposure for those teachers who create learning content. And it can even mean broader success for innovative commercial providers, as they begin to see teacher recommendations drive sales of their products to geographies not covered by traditional distribution channels.

My story for this blog —-
I attended the NCCE (Northwest Council for Computers in Education) meeting in Seattle last week. Kudos to Heidi Rogers, et al, for an outstanding and fun event. One of the keynote speakers was Marc Prensky, who was, as always, engaging and enjoyable.* After his speech, he dropped by the WeAreTeachers table to chat. He asked for my elevator pitch, and when I gave it, he responded with “But Sandy, everything teachers do online should be free!” When he walked away, I thought, geez — Didn’t I just see him signing selling his book, “Don’t Bother me Mom, I’m Learning,” over there to these teachers? And I’m pretty sure he got paid for that keynote. So wonder if he is saying that his IP (Intellectual Property) is worth more than theirs? While I know Marc did not mean to be arrogant (he is, after all, a former teacher himself) — it is curious to me that there is a prevailing attitude that ‘everything on the internet should be free, unless it comes from me.’

Counter that experience with one I had with Alan King , a new teacher friend I met in Seattle, and a new WAT (WeAreTeachers) member. He is considering retirement soon, and had this to say. “Sandy, WeAreTeachers could literally change my life plans. Even after retirement, I still have lots to share, but will need an income. This could be my answer!”

Rock on, Alan. Live that dream.

*Marc did a really interesting (and risky!) activity with this audience of over 2000 folks. He posted on the screen a question, then had an ‘open phone test.’ Everyone had 5 minutes to answer the question using only their cell phone (no computers). His point was that we can all learn something when we work together, and whatever technology is generally available should be considered for use in teaching — even cell phones. Left an impression.