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Friday 27 July 2012

Fundraising in Schools (part 2)

An update from a previous post about fund raising for school projects.
Are group of teachers, students, volunteers and community sponsors have been working very hard to setup a funding platform and gather resources to support two students to partake in an Arts based exchange programme. We have just gone through the application process for the crowd funder web fund raising site. We didn't get approved at first and had to resubmit more information. We were then approved. However, because of the summer break

Tuesday 24 July 2012

Is Wikipedia a scholarly tool for students?

The word Wikipedia for me as a teacher has always seemed untrustworthy. Upon reading this article http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/education/article/1230732--wikipedia-course-gets-students-research-online I may have to rethink how I talk about Wikipedia with my students. I'm still not sure I'll be able to fully trust it but it could make a good starting point for research based projects. Me personally, I prefer and recommend Google scholar when doing research. Regardless I'd be interested to hear what others think of and how you use or don't use Wikipedia in your classrooms.

Sunday 8 July 2012

Fundraising in Schools

I have taken a month off from writing any blog posts to focus on my preparing,teaching, marking of my classes and researching/ writing for my module of my MA course in continuing professional development. Secondly, I have been researching fundraising opportunities as I am helping to promote and establish an exchange programme between my school and a Canadian school based in the arts. For example, last year was the first year it took place and providing we can find the money this will be the second. The idea is to have two from each swap countries and perform/ show their artistic talents abroad. It builds their self esteem and gives them a focus. Possibly even contacts that they could use in the future if they decide to make a career out of it. Along with selecting the best possible candidate from a series of interviews, auditions and behaviour reports we try to select the students that would best represent the school and that might not other words be able to afford something like this. Right enough about the background information as the blog suggests this post is about fundraising not a programme I'm trying to organise an run. (if you want to know more info about thi though feel free to message me). I've come across a couple of Internet sites that really seem to be changing the way in which fundraising occurs.
Ok yes there are still the typical bake sales and raffles within schools but to fund a larger program you need to think bigger. Asking local corporations for money an getting the local newspaper on your side is always a good thing. However, in times like these(slow economic growth/recession) there tends not to be a lot of money in these areas. Local and county boroughs (government) have some money available. Again not much but worth applying for. The newest way of fundraising to which I don't have much experience but am going through the process of are with websites such as www.crowdfunder.co.uk (UK based) www.kickstarter.com (American based but expanding)and www.indiegogo.com

These sites seem to really work off of social networking sites along with own media promotions to expose people, schools, businesses looking for capital to an international group of generous people looking to promote and develop worth while causes. Again I dont know much more about these sites as of yet but will be updating as I go through this process. Initially these sites look very interesting. Go check them out!

Also I thought I'd include a link to the Canadian festival website in case anyone would like to look into this a bit further. www.riverartsfestival.ca

If you have used one of these sites in the past to fundraise and would like to suggest ideas to make a "pitch" successful please post.

ThanksMark