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Sunday, July 10, 2011

Will blog for tablets...

Creative Commons by: Sean MacEntee
 Ugh.

Double Ugh.

I'm hitting wall after wall in regards to funding my tablet experiment.

I'm being pretty flexible with the type of tablet and even the number of tablets (I'm ok with just 30 and my two classes will just share every 6 weeks or switch at the semester.)

Heck, I'm even not stuck on tablets. The Nook Color could be awesome in my classroom. It doesn't have a camera, but I can easily work around that minor issue. The price it is good and it has the same types of apps I would need on traditional tablets. Since this is an English class, a Nook might be a better option.

I've reached out to business to see if something could be worked out, but I've received "Not at this time" and "No money for this type of project" types of answers.

I'm frustrated because I know that this is a great project, but nobody can/will fund it. Money is spent on so many stupid and insignificant projects by federal, state and local government, but when worthwhile projects come along, wallets close. It forces teachers to fight over a limited number of grants in a short period of time. If I have a good idea, like this one, but do not think of it at the right time of grant proposals, like I did for this, I'm out of luck until next year.

I'm going to keep plugging along and I'll probably be missing from Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus as I work on this project.

I'll be out in San Francisco in two weeks speaking on a panel of teachers at the AP Annual Conference, maybe I'll meet some like minded people out there interested in helping me with this project.

I'll keep everyone posted on the project as it evolves. Keep educating the crap out of those kids everyone. They are lucky to have awesome people like you. :-)

- @TheNerdyTeacher

5 comments:

  1. Have you thought about writing a grant? Maybe together we could figure it out.

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  2. Hey, have you heard of Donorschoose.org? Not sure if it works for all types of projects, but you might want to check it out. One of my friends in Indiana has been able to raise some money for her classroom this way! This is a link to her page so you can see what it's about: http://www.donorschoose.org/we-teach/915407.1307116789?utm_source=dc&utm_campaign=facebook&utm_medium=tp&utm_content=teachergotdonation

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  3. Did you check out digitalwish.com? I have not used it, but was told about the site at a conference last year. Good luck with your funding search!!

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  4. This might be a little more involved than you were looking for, but Pepsi refresh gives away $50,000 a month to 10 projects. It's a voting thing, our school tried in January and came in 11th, trying for IPads. We are thinking of trying again. You can vote for 5 projects daily so we could team up, ideally finding 3 other strong projects to work with. I teach in Lee's Summit, I believe you know Kyle Pace who helped us out. It's a ton of work and I'm wary to try again, but if we had like minded ideas and could trust each other it might just work. My e-mail is angelachase24@hotmail.com if you are interested.

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  5. @Scott - There are grants I could write, but not in time to have them by the start of the school year.

    @kmkpax - I've looked into DonorsChoose, but I need a certain number of points to request the amount of money for the project. Aldo, my kids do not need these tablets. The projects on DC are for kids who need equipment.

    @treadinger - I will look into that. Thanks!

    @Mrs. Larson - Thanks for the tip. I will look into this and drop you an email later this week.

    Thanks for all of the support everyone. I love my PLN.

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