Tag: education

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Here we are, third step in our Web-native social change review series:EducationGeneration.org.

 

 

 

As a project born from Global Agents for Change, a California-based "social change catalyst, driving sustainable solutions to global poverty and inspiring youth to create a better world", EducationGeneration is "dedicated to providing access to education for students around the globe" (from EducationGeneration.org).

 

Beta launched in fall 2008, EducationGeneration has already funded 130 scholarships and raised over $30,000.

 

 

 

As in several other known platforms across the Web (think about Kiva.org), here we witness the Web enabling a process that closely resembles child adoption: users are asked to make their donation directly to an individual, in this case deciding to invest in that boy or girl's education.

 

The process is again as simple as it gets: users browse students' profiles on the EducationGeneration website, pick a student to support, click on the donate button (minimum is 20 dollars)...that's it!:money is processed by PayPal and 100% of it (if we exclude PayPal fees) goes directly to the chosen student's personal education. This is possible thanks to fairly advantageous partnerhips with local institutions, one of them for example being the Canadian SEED. There are not many information about this passage on the site and we will further deepen the matter in the next days.

 

 

 

Information about schools and their costs, partnering institutions in loco, the student' educational stage and even some individual notes on her or his favourite topics and skills, are included.

 

Some of the best assets of EducationGeneration appear to be:

Tags: donorschoose, education, philanthropy 2.0, social change, teaching, technology for change, Web-native projects for social change, Add more tags...,

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DonorsChoose is surely one of the most successful and intriguing projects out there. Indeed not the latest, but I feel it is good to start with a charitable venture that has been able to become an landmark example for everybody in the philanthropic field.  

 

Like many of the Web-native platforms we will investigate, DonorsChoose is far from being a project that exhausts its impact in online discussions and information spaces.

DonorsChoose is, in fact, producing material change by choosing, buying and delivering goods aimed at educational projects. It does so by connecting American teachers (since 2000, more than 103,000, apparently) with the general public through a simple Web interface where teachers advertise their educational projects and the general public chooses to fund one or more of them on the basis of their innovativeness or any set of personal criteria.

The site itself suggests three interesting keywords in this sense: "get local, get inspired, get choosy". :)

 

 

 

A DonorsChoose user might thus end up funding a project because of its innovativeness and originality or rather its simplicity; because of its cost, high or low, or its need in respect to the "poverty level" (calculated in terms of students free/reduced lunch eligibility and thus associated to the average income level of the class); some other users might instead prefer find special, even personal attachment to a theme (for example a particular literature having impacted their lives) specified in an educational proposal or, ultimately, an objective of a learning project, be it science, sustainable living, peace, understanding of diversity, history or any other goal.

 

 

 

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Tags: development, education, one laptop per child, open source, sim city, Add more tags...,

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I have always appreciated, among the many, those games who could be able to genuinely entertain and, at the same time, teach you something. Stuff like "Civilization" and "Colonization", for example, but several others could be mentioned.

 

I had never thought about SimCity as one of the most "educational". Well, I guess I just couldn't see its potentialities.

SimCity is just two times good...Able to entertain -without the need of violence, speed or amazing graphics - millions of people through its addictive nature years ago, able to be used - and furtherly improved - for educational purpose now.

 

 

 

That's what ArsTechnica was explaining a couple of months ago.

Electronic Arts - finally -, pushed by Don Hoskins, donated the original Sim City game to the "One Laptop per Child" project, to be distributed among schoolchildren in developing countries. 

Hoskins, who attempted to obtain Sim City few years ago after its ten-year distribution contract expired, will now be able to fulfil his original goal: reinventing the game for academic uses.  

 

The most excting part, IMHO, comes from thefact that the Open Source community will now be able to renovate Sim City and - my favorite sentence - take it to new educational directions.

 

The game is also available from EA website to be played...online.

 

Update: What classic game developers have always dreamt has now turned into reality. Sim City...Ops...Micropolis (title changed, EA requirements) source code is finally available here. Thanks to Don Hopkins.